


House of Broken Bones

by ineptshieldmaid



Series: The Patron Saint of Communicating Like A Fucking Adult [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: BDSM, Injury, M/M, Mental Breakdown, POV character is not always a nice person, Past Infidelity, Polyamory, Retirement, dead pets, except for the condition of being an asshole, meaningful conversations with potatoes, non-monogamy fixes everything, pretty low-key past infidelity discussion, small exercises of gratuitous switzerland localisation, temporary disability, unhealthy uses of kink as a coping mechanism, viktor nikiforov leads a pancake-based lifestyle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 16:47:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9616553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptshieldmaid/pseuds/ineptshieldmaid
Summary: ‘I think,’ Yuri says, still watching Chris like Chris is a puzzle he’s trying to solve, ‘that you had a good thing with Théo. If you know he doesn’tneedyou, and his partner doesn’t either, and they still want you around? They still want to care for you? That’s… that’s love, Chris.’Or: Working title 'Christophe retires, has a breakdown, and a threesome'.





	

**Author's Note:**

> People who deserve thanks and gratitude in this fic:  
> Notcaycepollard, for alpha-reading and target-audience testing  
> Trojie, for alpha-reading selected scenes  
> Neomeruru, for egging-on  
> The nice person who pointed out to me that Viktor being vulnerable is the whole point of fanfic, and caused me to realise that was what was missing from this.
> 
> Caveats lectors in the endnotes. Title from The Foo Fighter's 'St Cecilia' (one of the few candidates I can think of for patron saint of communicating like a fucking adult).

Christophe finds Yuri’s family home easily enough. The inn is hardly a secret, although Chris is given to understand that the locals keep the location of Yuri and Viktor’s own apartment from the tourist population. They’re protective of the pair, from what Chris has heard, and he likes the sound of that. Chris himself doesn’t really need to worry about that - he’s recognisable, but nowhere near as famous in Switzerland as Viktor was in Russia, and there are enough athletes of various sorts kicking around Lausanne that he can fade into the background, unlike Yuri, Hasetsu’s pride and joy. 

It’s not until he goes to check in that Chris realises he has no story prepared, no explanation for his sudden appearance here, other than the booking he made less than twenty-four hours ago.

‘If you like, I call Yuri?’ the man who checks him in says. Yuri’s father, Chris is fairly sure: the family resemblance is strong. Chris wonders if Viktor looks at Mr Katsuki and sees the future, and how he feels about that. It’s not that Chris thinks Viktor ought to be disappointed. Mr Katsuki is no one’s heartthrob, but he seems… Nice. Comfortable to have around. 

Chris realises he hasn’t answered the question. ‘No, no it’s okay,’ he says. Mr Katsuki asks him to wait a moment, and disappears into another room. He comes back a few moments later with a young woman, who smiles at him in a way that seems more familiar than bland customer service.

‘Ku-ris!’ the woman says, and Chris recognises the intonation. This isn’t Minako, the ballet teacher, it’s… the sister. He’s forgotten her name.

Mr Katsuki must recognise his confusion, because he rests a hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘My daughter, Mari. You remember her?’

‘Of course,’ Chris says, seizing the name. ‘Mari. It’s been, what, four years?’

‘Two and a half,’ Mari says, eyes crinkling. ‘I came to Boston, when you won bronze.’ 

‘Oh,’ Chris says. He had, too. Scraped the third podium spot behind Yuri Katsuki (gold) and Viktor (silver), much to everyone’s surprise. Including, at that point, his own. By rights JJ or Plisetsky or even Altin should’ve eclipsed him by then, but Plisetsky’s performance had suffered from his growth spurt, and somehow Chris held steady against the other two. Had continued to do so, until. Well. Until this season.

‘Does Yuri know you’re here?’ Mari asks him. Mr Katsuki has surrendered the conversation to her and her superior English, but is watching and listening. Chris is pretty sure his comprehension is better than his spoken language. When Mari mentions her brother, their father’s eyes light up. Chris thinks that if Viktor looks at his father-in-law and sees the future for his husband, Viktor is probably a lucky man.

‘No,’ he says, again. ‘No, he doesn’t.’

Mari looks skeptical. ‘The last time someone came here to surprise him, they ended up married.’

Chris finds himself laughing, a hoarse bark of a laugh that doesn’t sound like his own. ‘I promise, I’m not here to marry anyone.’ He looks down at his knee, surprised, again, that it looks more or less normal. ‘Hot springs are recommended for recovery,’ he says, as upbeat as he can. This is true, although there are plenty of hot springs closer to home.

‘Ah, the injury,’ Mari says. She looks at the computer screen for a moment, and then clucks. ‘All the rooms we have are up some stairs, today.’

Chris suppresses the urge to snarl at her. She’s just doing her job. Nicely. Considerately. ‘Stairs are fine,’ he says. Mari’s eyes drift to the cane. ‘It’s for balance,’ he says, ‘sometimes the knee just goes. Mostly I’m fine, but…’

He hates talking about it, he really does. But Mari doesn’t question him further, and if she pities him it doesn’t show on her face. She just hands him a key and says ‘Papa will show you upstairs, then.’

* * *

_Patineur Romand blessé_. He’d made bigger headlines by smashing his knee, and any Olympic chances he still had, than he’d made by medalling anywhere. Typical. He couldn’t even bring himself to call Nonno and enjoy the spectacle of his grandfather’s imprecations against sloppy journalism, mis-identifying his precious grandson as Romand. It wasn’t as if Chris had ever _lived_ in Poschiavo, but they had a longstanding family tradition of not being bothered to change the details, and besides, it would break Nonno’s heart. (Which is why, if Chris had called, he wouldn’t have bothered trying to convince Nonno that the place of residence was more important these days: Nonno knew, and was determined to ignore such changes.)

So there he was, with his kneecap in two pieces, in a hospital in Lausanne, officially a citizen of a town in Grisons where he had never lived, thinking about the _lieu d’origine_ to avoid thinking about the ruins of his career. Except then it occurred to him he had no good reason to stay in Lausanne now. His parents had moved on to Neuchâtel years ago; Nonno and Nonna were still in their picture-postcard town; all there was keeping him here was skating, and that had pretty definitively fallen apart on him, along with his kneecap.

Théo came in to see him later that day. Chris was, at that point, pathetically glad to see him - it wouldn’t last, as the weeks and months rolled on he’d find himself dreading looking into Théo’s eyes, afraid of seeing either pity or frustration. But at that point, less than a week from the injury and two days out from surgery, Chris was high as fuck on painkillers and desperate for anything to cling to. Théo ran his fingers through Chris’ hair (lank and sweaty though it was) and Chris insisted he sit on the bed so Chris could bury his face in the fabric of Théo’s jeans and pretend he didn’t want to cry.

‘Why did you stay here?’ he asked Théo, once the urge to weep like a child had passed.

‘Maybe I like being cried on,’ Théo said, smiling at him, fond and amused. 

‘No,’ Chris shook his head, trying to shake the fog of opioids out of it. ‘No, I mean, after you left the Béjart, you didn’t have to stay. You could’ve gone… anywhere.’

‘Oh.’ Théo was quiet for a moment, but his fingers kept stroking slow arcs into Chris scalp. ‘Well. All my friends were here.’

Chris tried to remember if he’d ever met any of Théo’s friends from before he quit ballet. He couldn’t remember any, but maybe that was just the drugs at work.

‘My doctors were here,’ Théo said, in a lower voice still. ‘And, to be honest, I was too much of a wreck to think of going anywhere else.’

That sounded more like it. Too much of a wreck to go anywhere else.

‘Hey,’ Théo said, fingers still combing through Chris’ hair. ‘I brought your shampoo. Better than the weird hospital stuff.’

Chris had to take a second to figure out what he was supposed to say to that. ‘Thanks,’ seemed about right. He couldn’t be bothered, though. His right leg and the brace were getting wrapped up in something waterproof every day or two and someone would shift him into one of those big showers with a special chair and leave him to wash himself. He was supposed to be glad he was up to that much, up to the great and responsible task of washing himself, but he couldn’t be bothered being glad. Just like he couldn’t be bothered being grateful now, even though he knew he should.

Somehow, Théo wrangled assistance out of an orderly, got his leg waterproofed, and got him shifted into the shower room. The chair had a special thing built into it to keep his leg straight out in front of him, no bending or slouching allowed. Somehow, between the two of them, they got Chris mostly washed - it would have been easier, he realised toward the end, if he just let Théo do the work, but for all he couldn’t be bothered being proud, he couldn’t bring himself to give up that much, either. 

‘Here.’ Théo held out the shampoo, offering to squeeze it out into Chris’ hand, and something about that, the half-way offer, finally touched Chris somewhere. 

‘Can you… please?’ 

No sooner had he asked than he had to swallow down the conviction he hadn’t the _right_ to ask. That the fact he needed all this help now cheapened this, this old ritual between them, to something like drudgery. It didn’t help that, as far as he could recall, he only ever asked this sort of thing from Théo before, or after, or in between, sex. This kind of care - bathing, spoiling him - wasn’t part of their day-to-day. It went with the fact that Chris liked Théo to hurt him, and Théo liked to use him rough. Afterwards (or before, or in between) they’d do something like this: shower together, or comb each other’s hair, or dress and undress each other slowly. Not every time; but then, they didn’t play rough every time, either. Chris had a career to think about; the same body that craved being pushed around, bruised, marked up with hands and teeth and assorted accessories was his only professional asset, his carefully-honed performing machine. Or was, until he smashed it in what should’ve been a regular practice and put himself out of action indefinitely.

‘I thought you’d never ask.’ Théo kissed him on the temple, squirted out a dollop of shampoo, and slid soapy fingers into his hair.

* * *

The first day Chris eats in the inn, sits for a while in the onsen, and uses jet-lag as his excuse for being anti-social. He knows he can’t avoid Yuri and Viktor forever: he doesn’t even want to. If he wanted to avoid them, he wouldn’t be in Yuri’s goddamn family home. 

The second day he knows he should call them, or text, or something. Mari tells him, over breakfast, that the pair will be at the rink all morning. The logical choice would be to go down there, carry through on his ‘I’m here to surprise my friends’ façade. He doesn’t, though. He takes a bus down to the beach instead, and walks too far on his bad leg. He eats udon in a run-down sort of eatery for lunch, and ends up having to take a taxi back to the inn (which is an adventure: Chris has forgotten the name of the damn place, and the taxi driver doesn’t speak much English. Eventually Chris manages to scrape together the phrase ‘onsen Katsuki’ and that seems to do it. He gets home, at least). He naps away most of the afternoon.

When he comes down around dinner time, he’s planning on ordering dinner there, and he has excuses ready for when Mari asks him if he’s seen Viktor or Yuri yet. There’s no sign of Mari, though; only Mr Katsuki, who beams when he sees Chris, and ushers him toward a different door. 

‘Private dinner,’ Mr Katsuki says, and Chris thinks, for a moment, that someone must have booked out the main dining room. Then Mr Katsuki says, beaming even harder, ‘All family!’ and slides the door open.

Chris stops dead in the doorway, leaning heavily on the cane. He doesn’t need to, he’s capable of standing upright while staring like a fool, but it’s become a habit. He’s glad of it, though, when he’s almost instantly bowled over by Minako, whose loud cry of ‘Ku-ris’ is accompanied by a sort of flying leap. Chris catches her with his free arm, steadying himself on the cane, while behind her, several people start speaking over the top of each other in Japanese. 

‘I apologise about our friend,’ Mr Katsuki says, in his gentle, serious way. ‘She has no politeness, hmm?’ Minako disentangles herself from Chris’ arm, and looks not one bit abashed. From the way Mr Katsuki is smiling, he’s used to her. Chris doesn’t mind, either, so he leans in and kisses Minako on the cheek - one, two, three times, which is both perfectly normal to Chris and enough to make Minako blush furiously and giggle like a teenager.

The good thing is that between Chris needing to catch, and then greet, Minako, and half the room wanting to berate Minako for attacking the invalid, Chris has a few moments to adjust to the fact that he’s been politely press-ganged into a Katsuki family dinner. There’s a bit of faffing around, but Mr Katsuki and Minako get him settled on the tatami, and someone (Mrs Katsuki, Chris thinks; he hasn’t really spoken to her yet) produces a pillow for under his knee. It’s all a lot less awkward than it could be.

Mr Katsuki disappears with Mari to bring in food. Chris finds himself staring across the table at Viktor and Yuri. They don’t seem to have changed much since the last time he saw them (which was the GPF last year: Viktor had declined to compete, conserving himself for one last Olympic hurrah, but Yuri had made the finals, and earned a respectable silver behind Plisetsky. Altin had edged Chris out for bronze). Still happy, still radiating romantic fulfilment from every pore. More so, in fact, without the distraction of competition. Yuri sits neatly, legs folded up underneath him in what even Chris knows is the proper fashion (he’d do it himself, but the knee wouldn’t survive the meal in that position). Viktor sort of sprawls, leaning into Yuri’s side, and Chris can already tell he’s going to fidget his way through the entire meal. He ought to look completely out of place, a giant, twitching, protocol-defying foreign mess in the middle of this polite, neat family (well, polite, neat family and Minako), but he doesn’t. There might as well be a stamp on him that said ‘he’s a weird foreigner but he’s _our_ weird foreigner’. The Katsukis love him: it shows in every instagram picture Viktor posts of this place, and it shows in how evidently comfortable he is here, now.

‘Chris,’ Viktor says, and Chris steels himself for the obvious array of questions. Why didn’t you call us? How’s your leg? What are you doing here? ‘That’s a really terrible beard.’

‘Oh.’ Chris has to touch his face to remember it’s there. ‘Yeah, it. I forgot.’

‘It’s not so bad,’ Yuri says, giving Chris a considering look. ‘It’d be nice, if he trimmed it a bit.’

‘It is dreadful,’ Minako says, firmly. ‘It must go.’ She smirks and adds, ‘I’ll shave it for you, if you like.’

Somehow, when Chris had booked his tickets here, he’d forgotten about Minako. And now he’s forgotten how he normally flirts, and just looks at her awkwardly until Yuri rescues him.

‘It’s bad,’ Yuri says, ‘but you know, Viktor, it’s not as bad as that time you grew a goatee.’

‘It wasn’t a goatee, it was a Van Dyke!’ Viktor protests.

‘Which is a kind of goatee,’ Yuri says.

‘Whatever it was,’ Chris says, ‘I remember it, and Yuri’s right, it was terrible.’

It turns out to be that simple: they eat dinner. The Katsukis chatter with Minako; Viktor seems to follow about half of what’s going on, but no one expects Chris to, and that’s surprisingly calming. It had been harder than he’d expected, being out and about today. Chris is used to foreign countries, but he’s not actually spent much time outside of Europe, except for skating. He speaks four European languages: most places he goes he can get by. But only now does he realise he’s not been outside of Europe or North America except for competitions. Here, there are signs in English for tourists, but he doesn’t recognise anything in the conversations around him, and although it’s fine - he ordered food, he got back to the inn - it’s much more tiring than he’d expected. Or it was, when he was out on his own. With the Katsukis, it’s comfortable: he figures if there was anything he was supposed to know, someone would tell him. And at least this way he’s not expected to make small talk, like he would be if this was a party at home.

At the end of the meal, it’s Viktor who helps Chris to his feet, and he takes the opportunity to wrap his arms around Chris. Chris lets him, lets himself be held and comforted, and tries not to think too hard about the fact that this is exactly why he came here, and not anywhere else he could have gone.

* * *

‘Who’s looking after your cat?’ Viktor asks him. They’ve fallen into the habit of picking Chris up from the inn after training and taking him somewhere for lunch. Chris knows that means they’re borrowing Mr Katsuki’s car far more than they would otherwise, but no one seems to mind, and it saves him from dealing with buses or taxis. 

Today they’re in Viktor and Yuri’s flat, which is incredibly nice, especially compared to Chris’ own place. It’s small, but light and airy and scattered with comfortable evidence that two busy people live here. Yuri is wearing one of Viktor’s old competition jackets, all white-and-red, and Chris is pretty sure Viktor finds that incredibly hot. Viktor is looking like Viktor, and Viktor’s dog, who is getting on in years by now, is sitting at Chris’ feet and begging for treats. Chris doesn’t have any dog treats, or anything else (Yuri is in the kitchen assembling sandwiches) but Makkachin is the hope which springs eternal.

‘Chris?’ Viktor asks, and Chris realises he didn’t answer the question.

‘Oh. No one,’ he says. ‘She, uh. She died.’

Viktor looks stricken. ‘When?’

‘Last year,’ Chris says. During the GP season, actually. He’d been home when it happened, at least. It hadn’t seemed too much of a blow, then, but he finds his throat choking up now. He stares at the table (a regular western table on regular legs: easier on his knees than the one at the inn). Viktor doesn’t say anything.

‘Hey, Viktor,’ Yuri says, coming around the kitchen door. ‘Can you… wait. What’s wrong.’

‘Chris’ cat died,’ Viktor says, like he’s announcing the end of the world.

‘Oh, no!’ Yuri puts down whatever it is he’s carrying on the table, and comes over to Chris. He doesn’t touch Chris, but ducks down so he’s on a level with Chris’ eyes. ‘Do you need to go home? We can book you a flight…’

Chris has to laugh. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I mean, she’s been dead for almost a year now.’ Despite his best efforts, the laugh turns into a sniff and he is, in fact, going to cry in Viktor and Yuri’s living room over his cat, who has been dead since last season. He realises, after resigning himself to this fact, that although Viktor is staring at him, Yuri is staring at Viktor. 

‘You really are terrible with people crying,’ Yuri says, to Viktor.

‘No I’m not!’ Viktor says. ‘I just. What am I supposed to do?’

‘Say something, perhaps?’ Yuri says. ‘Chris, I’m so sorry about your cat. What was her name?’

‘Germaine,’ Chris says, damply. ‘After Madame de Staël.’ Both Viktor and Yuri look blank, so he adds, ‘She wrote novels and annoyed Napoleon.’

‘Impressive CV,’ Viktor says. ‘For a cat.’

This time Chris’ laugh comes out less damp, and he’s surprised to feel himself smiling. 

‘Would you like a hug?’ Yuri asks. 

Chris isn’t really used to being asked about hugs. In his experience, people either hug you or they don’t. Or, if they’re Americans or Australians in Europe, they try to hug you when you’re trying to kiss them on the cheek, and a strange sort of dance ensues.

‘You could hug Makkachin instead of us,’ Yuri suggests. ‘He gives good hugs.’

‘No, you’re okay,’ Chris says, and then realises how strange that sounds. ‘I mean. Yes? Hug?’ Damnit, that sounds even worse.

Yuri hugs him, sort of awkwardly. Between him standing and Chris sitting they can’t do the round-the-shoulders thing that Americans do. Chris ends up with his face smushed into Yuri’s chest, and Yuri pats his back like he’s a small child who needs comforting. 

‘Viktor,’ Yuri says, over Chris’ head. ‘Come here and hug your friend.’

Viktor thunks out of his chair and onto his knees at Chris’ side, wraps his arms around Chris’ waist and rests his head on Chris’ back, while Chris leans into Viktor’s husband and said husband pats them both.

‘I’m sorry about Germaine,’ Viktor says, into Chris’ shirt. 

‘Me too,’ Chris says. ‘I miss her.’

Yuri pats them both on the head in a way that Chris knows perfectly well is patronising, but which he finds comforting anyway. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Now. I made sandwiches. Viktor, can you get glasses and drinks?’

Viktor disentangles himself and sets off to do as he’s told. Chris straightens up and looks, sort of awkwardly, up at Yuri. He really ought to think of Yuri as his friend, by now: they’ve been drunk (or, rather, Yuri has been tipsy and Chris has been drunk - no one in the sport has seen Yuri properly drunk since Sochi, not even at his own wedding) together often enough. But he still thinks of Yuri as _Viktor’s husband_. Or just as _Viktor’s_ , really. 

‘Thank you,’ he says, quietly. 

Yuri smiles at him. ‘Any time.’ And although Chris knows it’s a politeness, he can’t actually turn up and cry on Yuri at literally any time he chooses, it feels sincere.

* * *

Chris knew it was ridiculous, but he reached the point where he couldn’t bring himself to go to Théo’s apartment anymore. 

‘It’s just…’ he floundered for words, trying to explain and trying to obfuscate at the same time. ‘It’s the cats.’

‘The cats?’ Théo sounded baffled. Annalies, his partner, had two exquisitely handsome feline beasties, who ruled the whole household. And until now, Christophe had loved them both, with a fierce adoration second only to the way he loved Théo, and Théo and Anna together. 

‘Yeah. I… I miss Germaine.’ The thing was, Germaine dying hadn’t changed anything - not about Chris’ relationship with Théo, or with Théo and Anna, or with their cats. And yet here they were now.

‘You can borrow our cats any time,’ Théo says. If anything, the casual use of the plural possessive hurt Chris most. Anna’s cats predated Théo in her life, just as Chris did her in Théo’s, but they were _our_ cats, hers and Théo’s.

‘It’s not the same,’ Chris said.

‘I don’t understand.’ Théo reached out to take his hand, and Chris shrugged away. ‘Is this to do with the accident?’

‘Not everything’s to do with the damn accident!’

‘Can I get you to write that down and sign it,’ Théo asked, expression halfway between laughter and frustration. ‘So I can bring it out as evidence in future?’

Christophe knew what that meant: it meant that everything about Chris _was_ about the accident, now. He hated it just as much as Théo did. But Théo had Anna, and his job, and their damn cats, and had long ago mastered ‘How To Move On From Your Elite Performance Career: For Dummies’.

‘Just leave it, okay?’ When Théo leaned in and kissed him sweetly, he grabbed at the front of Théo’s shirt, dragging him sharply closer. ‘And less of the sweet gentle shit,’ he said. ‘My leg’s fucked, not the rest of me.’

‘Oh, now,’ Théo said, tipping Chris’ face up, fingers digging sharply into his jaw. ‘What makes you think you deserved to be fucked?’

Chris pretended to think about that for a moment. ‘My outstanding grace and charm?’

‘Right, sure. You’ll have to offer me more than that.’

‘Whip’s in the same place it always is.’ Chris raised his eyebrows, all challenge.

‘No.’ 

Of course. He couldn’t stand stable on two feet, at that point, and kneeling was out of the question.

‘Backless stool,’ Chris said. ‘Face-down on the bed.’

Théo shook his head. ‘Stool’s got no leg support. And you know I don’t like the angle lying down.’

Six months ago Christophe could take a flogger to the back while maintaining a forward split. Now they were arguing about _angles_. 

‘I don’t care. I need you to fucking _hurt_ me.’ It’s not that he didn’t hurt already: the knee ached even through the painkillers, and when he moved wrong, the wire holding it all together scraped against bone and scar tissue. He was used to working through pain, used to harnessing it for his own ends (on the ice, in bed) but this was relentless.

Théo slapped him across the cheek - lightly, but enough to shock him.

‘What the fuck?’ Chris leant forward. If he were on two feet, he’d be spoiling for a fight, aiming to shove Théo off balance and wrestle him down. He couldn’t do that, though, and he got another slap, harder this time and bruising across his mouth.

‘That’s for thinking I need toys to hurt you with.’ Théo gripped Chris’ jaw again. 

_Oh, fuck yes,_ Chris thought. It wasn’t as if he needed his face for anything, anymore, and his physical therapist could think whatever the fuck she likes.

‘You sure you’re up to it, dancer boy?’ he asked, and didn’t flinch when that got him a backhand across the other cheek.

Théo leant down and spoke into his hear. ‘I can give you what you need,’ he said, and punctuated it with a sharp bite to Chris’ earlobe. ‘You know I can.’

‘Prove it.’

* * *

Eventually Viktor and Yuri figure out that Chris is supposed to be doing a limited workout by way of physical therapy.

‘Not much I can do on my own,’ Chris says, from the warm corner of the onsen where he’s been soaking and letting the heat relax muscles that are constantly tight from over-compensating or from trying not to over-compensate.

‘You’re not on your own,’ Yuri says, admirably calm for a man whose husband is pushing him down into a perfect split.

‘You two don’t count,’ Chris says, and then winces. ‘I don’t mean it like that. I mean. You’re training, that’s different.’

‘I’ve met physical therapists,’ Viktor says, ‘and they _always_ give you exercises you can do on your own. And if you need help, you have us.’

‘Lay off, guys,’ Chris says. ‘It’s not a big deal. It’s not like I ever need to be in competition form again.’

Both Viktor and Yuri stop what they’re doing to stare at him.

‘What? Seriously, you can’t expect me to make a comeback. I know you two are incurable optimists, but be realistic.’ If he was younger, maybe, but he’s definitely sitting this season out, and he’s old for a figure skater already. Not as old as Viktor, but even Viktor has bowed out now, made his last Olympic season his swan song.

‘So you’re not competing,’ Viktor says, with a slightly over-performed nonchalance. ‘I know you. You can’t tell me you plan on never dancing again. I know you do all sorts of things with boats in the summer. If you want to use your body for _anything_ , you have to look after it.’

‘Oh, darling,’ Chris says, arching back against the side of the pool. ‘I plan on letting other people use it _for_ me.’

Viktor’s face flames red, and Chris realises this might be the first time he’s been salacious at either of the pair since he got here. Nice to know he still has it in him.

Viktor might be embarrassed (or possibly turned on - but Chris doesn’t give himself that much credit), but Yuri looks amused, and sort of intrigued. He swings his legs around to dangle his feet in the water, and leans forward a little in Chris’ direction, hands folded on his knees.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘wouldn’t a full range of movement in your knees be an advantage, there? In case someone wants you on them?’

Viktor splutters, and Yuri continues looking supremely unflustered. Chris can’t tell if he’s actually completely innocent about this, or if he’s getting Chris back for flirting with Viktor. Either way, he wonders how the hell Viktor copes with this full-time.

‘Um,’ Chris says. ‘You have a point there.’

Yuri smiles at that, and his posture shifts from intense attention to something more open: palms turned up, shoulders soft. 

‘Minako has some gym equipment in her studio,’ he says. ‘The municipal pool has fairly cheap entry. If you tell us what you need, we can help.’

Chris closes his eyes and stares up at the sky for a moment. ‘Viktor’s right. I have exercises I can do on my own. The pool’s not a bad idea, I can take a bus there. You don’t need to…’

There’s a splash, and the next thing Chris knows, Yuri’s sitting on the ledge beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

‘If what you need is someone to check in with you, keep you accountable: we can do that.’ He looks up and across at his husband. ‘Can’t we, Viktor?’

‘We can,’ Viktor confirms. ‘And because neither of us is your coach, we’ll even be nice to you.’

‘Nice,’ Yuri agrees, ‘but persistent. Really annoyingly nice and persistent. If you’ll let us.’

All his recent instincts shout at Chris to keep his own damn problems to himself, but the habit of trusting Viktor runs deeper, and Yuri is looking up at him with such patience, like he doesn’t think Chris is a washed-up wreck at all. So Chris nods, and says, ‘Yes. Yes. Thank you both.'

* * *

Lunches with Viktor and Yuri become light snacks, followed by an hour or two in Minako’s studio. Chris does his assigned stretches, and very gentle resistance work. Viktor puts Yuri through stretches and barre routines. It isn’t as awful as Chris thought it might be, watching Yuri train while he himself is out of commission. Mostly, the two of them leave him to do his thing, but, for a man who’s had eyes and brain for no one but Yuri for over four years now, Viktor’s pretty good about checking in with Chris every so often. Perhaps this is because Yuri himself is paying attention, like Chris’ adventures with the weird elastic thing you hook around your foot and extend against are as interesting to him as any rinkmate’s progress would be.

Chris doesn’t go with them to the rink, though. 

It’s Yuri who ends up asking Chris about the obvious omissions in his already sparse account of how and why he ended up in Hasetsu. They’re at the inn, downstairs in the tatami room, drinking… something Chris doesn’t recognise. It’s not saké and it’s got some kind of plum in it, and Yuri declines to drink even shot of it, citing his training regime and his terrible alcohol tolerance. Viktor, who is actually a responsible coach as well as a ridiculous husband, concedes that point, but makes Yuri promise they’ll have a proper party before Chris leaves. Chris has no idea who will be involved in this party - it’s not as if he knows anyone in this town - but it’s got to be better than the last party he went to at home, all full of people who used to know him and couldn’t get their heads around what the accident had made of him.

‘What happened to your boyfriend?’ Yuri asks. ‘Théo. You never mention him.’

Chris stares at his glass of liqueur and tries not to feel like he’s swallowing knives.

‘Hey,’ Viktor says, over Chris’ head to Yuri. ‘We were being tactful!’

Yuri hums something like agreement, but says, ‘Sometimes tactful ends up looking like you don’t care, Viktor.’

Chris doesn’t quite like being talked over like this, like he’s a project they’re working on.

‘I wasn’t aware you knew about _tactful_ at all,’ Chris says, a sidelong smirk at Viktor. This is, of course, untrue: Viktor has been very, very tactful with Chris, for many years, and Chris with him. It’s the foundation of the trust they built up after their early, and spectacular, fuck-ups in the communication department.

‘Yuri has taught me a lot of things,’ Viktor says, a little misty-eyed. That sounds about right, too. Viktor might have been careful with Chris since their season of mutually terrible decisions, but he wasn’t with Katsuki, not at first. Hurled himself into Yuri’s life, begging to be loved, and terrified the poor guy out of his wits. Viktor had learned, and Chris thinks Yuri has rounded out some of Viktor’s ragged edges: he treats everyone a little better these days. More reserved, but more attentive with it.

‘Chris,’ Yuri says, drawing Chris’ attention back to him like a magnet. Chris had never really noticed it, before this trip - too busy noticing Yuri’s ass, and the wicked mind he keeps behind that shy exterior - but the man pays attention like he’s paying a solemn debt. And yet not, somehow, like he’s calculating your defaults in turn. ‘Do you want to tell us what happened there?’

No. Chris doesn’t. But he also doesn’t want to tell either of them _no_. A no like that would give the problem weight, make it something he has carry with him.

He shrugs, and manages a smile that’s almost nonchalant. 

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ he says. ‘We’re just… growing apart?’ he tries. Unfortunately, that makes Viktor’s expression melt into one of sympathy, which wasn’t what Chris was after at all. ‘It’s okay,’ he says, but his traitor voice goes ragged. ‘He’s got stuff going on, he’s got Anna, they don’t need me hanging around.’

‘Anna is…’ Yuri directs his questioning look to Viktor, apparently trusting that Viktor will know all the details of Chris’ love life. They’ve both met Théo, of course, because Théo choreographed for Chris for a few years and came to a few competitions. Viktor’s been to stay with Chris, but that was before either Yuri or Théo were on the scene. 

‘Théo’s girlfriend,’ Viktor says. And then, with exquisite care, ‘or is it wife, now?’

‘No?’ Chris looks up in surprise for a moment, before he realises what Viktor’s getting at. He blinks for a second, and reminds himself he’s dealing with the poster boys for monogamous matrimony. Some part of him still really wants to know if it took Viktor putting a ring on it for Katsuki to put out, but he’s not asked yet and he’s never going to. See above, re: tact. ‘No, wait, they didn’t break up with me or anything.’ He stops, corrects. ‘ _He_ didn’t.’ 

‘You broke up with him?’ Viktor leans a little into Chris’ side. It both warms Chris and hurts him, in a way, that he does this, offers support and comfort when he never quite gets what Chris does with his relationships or why.

Yuri, on the other hand, is still paying attention. ‘Hang on,’ he says, ‘did you, in fact, break up?’

‘No,’ Chris admits. Then considers the fact that he hasn’t called Théo since he got here. ‘Maybe?’

‘I recommend asking,’ Viktor says, drily. ‘If you’re not sure if you’re being broken up with, asking helps. Learn from my mistakes.’ 

Yuri rolls his eyes at Chris, like he wasn’t equally culpable in the various mistakes Chris had to hear about, at length, by various means, over the course of his and Viktor’s bizarre courtship. Chris still counts it a miracle he received no panicked telephone calls of the what-if-he’s-just-humoring-me variety on the eve of the wedding: either Viktor came through it like a functioning adult, or Plisetsky brought hitherto unseen skills in emotional support to his duties as best man.

This reflection does nothing for Chris’ mood right now. He gives up on braving it out and offers them a truth instead.

‘Maybe I’m not sure if I want to be broken up with.’ 

‘Ah.’ Viktor refills Chris glass and offers no further comment.

Yuri keeps paying attention, like he’s a charitable attention fund. 

‘If Théo didn’t break up with you,’ he says, ‘and they didn’t, ah,’ he flounders for a second, but finds the words, ‘become exclusive, why do you say they don’t need you?’

‘Well, they don’t. They’re as good as married - and no, that doesn’t mean exclusive - and they have two cats and… they’ll be fine without me.’

‘You sound like you’re justifying something,’ Yuri says.

‘You sound like a damn psychiatrist,’ Chris says, right back. He’s right, of course, but Chris doesn’t need to admit that.

Yuri shrugs. ‘Years of therapy will do that for you.’ Chris remembers, too late, that he did know that about Yuri: the only way he’d survived in professional competition before Viktor came along was stubborn dedication to working on his anxiety. Chris found that out shortly after the wedding, when it turned out being married and sickeningly happy _didn’t_ cure long-term mental health issues, and Viktor had come crying to Chris over his perceived failures as a husband as well as a coach.

The last thing Chris wants is another conversation about mental health. He downs the liqueur-and-soda Viktor had poured him.

‘Chris,’ Viktor says, nudging up against him again. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry to hear this, and I’m sorry I didn’t ask.’

‘You know what I want to know?’ Yuri asks, swiping Viktor’s glass and taking a sip out of it.

‘What?’ Chris and Viktor both ask, at once.

‘Why is it that you think that people who don’t _need_ you don’t _want_ you?’

Chris has to laugh. ‘Maybe because I’ve turned into a petty asshole who doesn’t know what to do with himself any more?’

‘At least he knows it,’ Viktor says, over Chris head. Then, knocking Chris with his elbow, ‘ _We_ like you, though.’

‘Not the same,’ Chris counters. Really, really not the same.

‘I think perhaps it is,’ Yuri says, leaning his head on one hand. ‘I mean, not the sex part, obviously.’ 

‘Obviously,’ Viktor echoes, and Chris really can't read his tone. It's sort of mocking, but unusually gently so, for Viktor.

‘But the rest of…’ Yuri pauses, sucks his lower lip into his mouth for a moment. ‘Perhaps what you mean is that you are afraid they don’t _want_ you, because they don’t need you.’

‘He’s not wrong,’ Viktor says. ‘And he sounds like _you_.’

Chris ignores that last bit.

‘I think,’ Yuri says, still watching Chris like Chris is a puzzle he’s trying to solve, ‘that you had a good thing with Théo. If you know he doesn’t _need_ you, and his partner doesn’t either, and they still want you around? They still want to care for you? That’s… that’s love, Chris.’

It is, and it also really doesn’t address the ways in which Chris turned on that love, knocked it down and then kicked it for good measure. But he doesn’t want to talk about that - and least of all, fucking hell, in front of Viktor. Instead, he makes a show of peering closely at Yuri and looking over to Viktor for help, and back to Yuri again.

‘Are you sure,’ he asks, ‘he’s never been poly?’

‘Pol...’ Yuri evidently doesn’t recognise the short-hand term. 

‘Polyamorous,’ Chris supplies. Yuri doesn’t look like that means much to him.

‘Non-monongamous? Open relationship?’ Viktor tries. Gives up. ‘Chris’ thing,’ he says, as if that explains it all. Maybe it does.

‘No,’ Yuri says, and he seems to be taking it as a serious question instead of the joke Chris meant. ‘No, but I… I was very single for a long time,’ he says, ‘and that’s sort of the same thing.’

‘How so?’ Viktor sounds genuinely curious, like this is something they’ve not actually discussed before.

‘Because,’ Yuri says, ‘you have to learn to accept the love that people give you, even if they have “more important” people in their lives.’ He makes air quotes around the qualifier. ‘Even from people who have no obligations to you; or the people who do, perhaps they give you more, and you aren’t sure you’re worthy of it.’ He twists the wedding ring on his finger: neither of them have ever grown out of that habit. ‘You know I say that I didn’t really know how to trust my friends, or my family, until you came along, Viktor?’ 

Viktor nods, and Chris wonders how the hell he got stuck in another conversation about Viktor Nikiforov and Yuri Katsuki’s life-changing romance.

‘It’s true,’ Yuri says, ‘but sometimes I think that if you hadn't come here, if we had met somewhere else, where I had no one else, I wouldn't have dared to trust you at all.’

Chris does not point out that they _did_ meet somewhere else, and Yuri had dared Viktor to dance with him. And Chris to a pole dancing competition, which is its own kind of trust.

‘If you're trying to tell me the solution to my love life problems is moving back in with my parents, you're out of luck. They haven't even got a spare room.’ There's Nonno and Nonna, of course, and Chris honestly has thought about it. It'd be nice, except for the absolute and total death of his sex life that would come with it.

‘No,’ Yuri says, ‘I'm trying to tell you that if it's hard for you to trust anyone right now, that's okay. And that when you're ready, when you learn to trust some kinds of love again, it gets easier for all the other kinds.’

* * *

In hindsight, it doesn’t really matter how it started. Not that day in particular; it started long before that. But Chris had been mouthing off, trying to goad Théo into treating him rougher, harder. He’d wanted to be knocked down. In his logic, he fell down all the time of his own accord; it wasn’t as if Théo was about to do any damage that Chris wasn’t already courting just by walking up stairs.

Of course Théo wasn’t going to do it, but if Chris pushed him hard enough, he’d come up with something nearly as good. There’d be some way of taking him down, making him feel shame as well as pain: there always was.

But this time, Théo snapped. He threw down the crop he’d been handling (crops, paddles: all more comfortable, Théo insisted, for him to use on a man lying flat). 

‘I’m not doing this anymore.’ He folded his arms.

‘Coward,’ Chris snapped. ‘You can do better than this.’

‘No, really,’ Théo said.

‘What, you want me to earn it this time?’ Chris snuck out a hand - the one not gripping the cane - to palm Théo’s cock. Théo jumped back.

‘Bonaparte!’ he yelled, throwing Chris’ own safeword at him. ‘Fuck, Chris, I’m serious. We’re not doing this anymore.’

The hand holding the cane suddenly spasmed, and dropped it. Chris sat rather abruptly on the end of his bed, physically as well as mentally disoriented. Théo looked down at him for a second, then bent down and picked up the cane. He handed it back without speaking.

‘Okay,’ Chris said. ‘Scene over. Are you going to tell me what I did wrong now?’

‘Are you this much of an asshole to everyone who safewords on you?’

Chris shrugged. ‘Doesn’t happen much.’

‘No, I suppose it doesn’t,’ Théo said, heavily. ‘You’ve always got someone else who has to be responsible for themselves _and_ you.’

‘If you’re about to tell me I’m too crippled to play, or that I’m psychologically disturbed, you can get fucked. I know what I like, and I’m not letting a goddamn injury get in the way.’

‘What about me?’ Théo sat down next to him, not quite touching. Chris made a wrong call, here: leaned back a little and smirked at him.

‘I know what you like, too.’

‘Well.’ Théo stared down at his own hands. ‘What I don’t like is being your walking talking source of on-demand sadism.’

‘Got a tip for you,’ Chris pulled up his best sarcastic voice. ‘Don’t take up with a masochist if you haven’t got the stomach for sadism.’

‘How about a suggestion for you,’ Théo fired back, ‘don’t keep calling someone your boyfriend if you’re only here for the roughing up.’

‘Roughing up is my favourite quality in a boyfriend, in case you haven’t noticed.’

‘Why are we fighting over this?’ Théo sounded choked.

‘Dunno. If I was in charge we’d be fucking now.’

Théo’s hands twitched, like he wanted to grab Chris, but he stood up instead.

‘Will you _listen_ to me?’ he stared down at Chris, who realised, too late, that Théo was close to crying. ‘This is all you want from me anymore. More fucking, rougher play, all nicely cordoned off from your real life.’

Chris, wisely, did not say what first came to his mind, which was that this _was_ his real life, now.

‘I get it, I really do,’ Théo went on. ‘But I’m allowed to want things too.’

‘What do you want, then?’

Théo pressed his thumbs to the bridge of his nose. It was an old gesture, a habitual one: one he used when he was thinking, or uncertain, and Chris hadn’t seen it for a long time.

‘When was the last time we had sex for the sake of sex, no rough handling required?’

Chris frowned, tried to remember, and gave up. ‘I don’t have competitions to worry about anymore.’

‘For fuck’s sake, is that all it is to you? Second-rate sex your career was limiting you to?’

‘Why, what would you call it?’

‘I called it having sex with my _boyfriend_.’ Théo drew in a slow breath. ‘Who I love, and who loved me.’

Far too late, things started making sense to Chris, and he held out a hand. ‘We could do that. If you like.’

‘I liked it better when you _wanted_ it,’ Théo said, but he took Chris’ hand.

‘But of course I want you, darling, any way I can get you.’ He punctuate that with a leer.

Théo laughed, kissed him on the forehead, and sat back down. Chris thought that might be the end of it, or near to, but after a moment Théo went on. ‘It’s more than that, though. It’s like you don’t care much at all about me, anymore, outside of sex or a scene.’

‘What?’

‘I get it, I really do. And the last thing I want to do is walk away from you right now. I know how hard it is. It’s hard to care about anything at all, some days.’

That hung in the air between them.

‘I mean… perhaps you should see someone, Chris. There are pyschs who work exclusively with athletes and performers, you know.’

‘I’ve got a shattered kneecap, not a broken _brain_ ,’ Chris pointed out.

‘And it’s perfectly normal to have trouble dealing with that!’ Théo said, a little too fast and a little too loud.

‘You’re projecting.’ Théo recoiled at the words. ‘You lost _your_ career in a mental breakdown, without illness or accident to justify it. Now you’re trying to force that onto me.’

Théo’s knuckles went white, and Chris hoped, for a second, he was about to punch him.

‘Shut the hell up,’ Théo said.

‘Why?’ If Chris was going to be a cruel, he might as well do it properly. ‘Doesn’t it bother you still? There was never anything wrong with your body: it had years of work left in it. The problem’s all in your mind.’

‘Yes.’ Théo’s voice was flat. ‘It does bother me, and we’re done here. Call me when you’re willing to quit being an asshole.’

He left.

Chris didn’t call.

* * *

‘We have a spare room, you know,’ Viktor says. They’re in the changing rooms at the municipal pool. Chris is in the middle of hauling his jeans on at the ankles (he still has to do this in two stages: up to the knees while sitting down, before he stands up to do the rest), because Viktor has a terrible sense of timing. Yuri is off on his training-mandated afternoon run, which Viktor has taken to skipping, claiming an ultimate preference for swimming. It might be something to do with Chris, but Chris doesn’t push too hard: he knows Viktor _does_ enjoy swimming.

‘Chris?’ He realises he’s ignored Viktor. 

‘Hmm?’ He gets to his feet without having lean his weight on the bench. Progress.

‘We have a spare room. You could stay with us, instead of at the inn.’

‘I like the inn.’ Chris fastens the zip and buttons on his jeans, nice and snug around his waist. He’s not actually put on much weight, which is sort of a relief; but then, he’s lost muscle practically everywhere, which isn’t. 

He can’t read the expression on Viktor’s face, when he looks. It’s… something close to worried, he thinks, but he can’t tell if Viktor’s worried about him, or about the conversation, or something else.

‘Plus,’ Chris adds, ‘I don’t want to take business away from the Katsukis.’ He likes the family too much to do the math of it-would-be-cheaper-if.

Viktor’s face brightens a bit. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘ That’s the thing. They don’t want to say anything to you, but the whole inn except for your room is booked out for a wedding next week, and they’re still getting enquiries.’

Chris hadn’t booked his room for weeks straight: just the first week, and then he’s been sorting it out week-to-week with Mari. He’d thought, initially, he might move on, see more of Japan. He could still: it’s only been a few weeks. 

‘If I’m in the way…’ he began, and Viktor shook his head. He picked up Chris’ cane handed it to him, managing to not make the gesture over-solicitous.

‘The room’s yours as long as you want it. Hiroko won’t hear otherwise. But…’ he hesitates. ‘You could come to us instead.’

Any attempt Chris might have made to interpret Viktor’s expression is foiled by Viktor turning away to pick up his bag; Chris has to pause to grab his own.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, hurrying after Viktor out of the changing rooms. ‘It seems I have to be an inconvenience to someone…’

‘No,’ Viktor says, eyes glancing sideways and away again. ‘You misunderstand. You would be welcome in our house, Chris.’

Chris is pretty sure Viktor didn’t used to be this formal. He wasn’t brash, exactly, but blunt: even in French ( _especially_ in French: Chris had once had the horror of reading an letter Viktor had tried to draft to a French newspaper editor), he would easily miss the forms and graces that smooth out social transactions. Chris used to find it sort of refreshing. Japan, and Yuri, have changed him. 

‘Thank you,’ he says, because he’s pretty sure that, oblique though it might be, _you would be welcome_ is sincere. ‘For the week of the wedding? I’ll ask Mari to put my bigger case in storage.’

Viktor stops beside the car (now on permanent loan from Mr Katsuki), and now he looks at Chris with close, almost unnerving attention. He fiddles with the car keys in his left hand, and if the right one (in his pocket) isn’t fidgeting with his ring, Chris will join a monastery at once.

‘You don’t _have_ to stay with us.’

Chris closes his eyes for a moment. He wonders if there’s a patron saint of communicating like a fucking adult, and, if so, why Nonna never taught him about her (or him. Chris just assumes the patron saint of communicating like a fucking adult would be a woman, which is sexist of him. Nonna would almost certainly agree with his logic).

‘Viktor. Do you _want_ me to come and stay with you?’

There’s a moment’s pause, and then, ‘Yes. We’d like that.’ Another pause. ‘I’d like that.’ 

‘Why?’ The question comes out before Chris can veto it as too much, too far beyond the careful lines of trust and omission they’ve built up. To Chris’ surprise, Viktor reaches out to him then, wraps his fingers gently around Chris wrist. Its his right hand: the wedding band is cool against the skin of Chris’ wrist.

‘You know,’ Viktor says, and the smile that sneaks from his eyes down his face is something Chris might never have seen in all the years he’s known Viktor. Or perhaps he’d seen it and not appreciated it for what it is. ‘This is the first time I’ve had a _home_ to invite people to, since I was a child.’

‘You had a flat in St Petersburg,’ Chris points out, not quite following the change in the conversation. ‘You never invited people over?’

‘Only, ah, lovers,’ Viktor says, and flushes very faintly. ‘And not to stay. Not friends, not _guests_.’

‘You want me to stay with you because you’ve never had… guests before?’

‘Because you’re my friend,’ Viktor says. ‘And you’re in my house every damn day, but going back to a hotel - yes, okay, I know it’s not a hotel, stop interrupting me - at night. It’s… don’t you think it’s weird?’

Chris shrugs. ‘You’re married _and_ Yuri’s training for next season. It’s your house, your space.’

‘And we like having you in it,’ Viktor says, simply. ‘ How long are you in Japan for, again?’

‘Six weeks,’ Chris says. ‘Probably. I’ve got specialist appointments in August.’

‘Stay with us. Please.’

* * *

Chris moves his stuff. Somehow he’s accumulated enough stuff to fill a duffel as well as his suitcase and his carry-on - he has to borrow a bag from Viktor. Viktor gives him a Team Russia 2009 bag, which raises more questions than it answers. Like: why has Viktor still got his 2009 team swag? 

It’s surprisingly easy to be around Viktor and Yuri, though. Chris had ideas of keeping to himself, and he _does_ turn in early, because he’s exhausted, his body only slowly adjusting to his expanded range of activity and exercise. But he finds himself laughing more. He insults Viktor and his artfully-dishevelled hair; he argues, long and passionately, with Yuri over the which Spiderman is the worst, and which the cutest actor (Yuri insists Tobey Maguire is _both_ , and he’s only wrong on one count). In the mornings, when Yuri and Viktor have already departed for the rink, Chris makes coffee and feeds Makkachin pieces of toast he probably shouldn’t be eating. Sometimes he takes Makkachin down to the beach, lets him off the lead and lets the dog’s antics (even an old dog can be roused by seagulls, it turns out) distract him from his own slow pace.

One evening Chris crosses paths with Yuri in the kitchen, and, on an automatic reflex, swats his ass. Yuri squeaks in surprise, and turns around. 

‘Christophe!’ he gasps, theatrically. ‘It’s been so long! I’d begun to think you didn’t care!’

Chris could point out that he’s been a model guest, not groping a married man in his own house, but that would ruin the fun. He bats his eyelashes instead.

‘As if I could ever fail to care about your magnificent posterior,’ he says, making exaggerated fondling movements in the air. ‘Why, some days it’s all I think about.’

Yuri covers his mouth with one hand and giggles, adorably entertained by Chris’ antics. Oh, Chris realises, he’s missed this. They both have. 

‘I’m hurt, Chris,’ Viktor says, from the doorway behind them. Chris’ stomach drops to his slipper-clad feet. It’s not as if he’s never felt Yuri up in front of Viktor before. On the contrary, he makes a point of doing so. Partly because he knows it riles Viktor up and he’s pretty sure Yuri gets off on that. Mostly, though, he gropes Yuri in front of Viktor because that’s the safest way to do it: he’s not actually hitting on either Yuri or Viktor, and as long as they keep it to a hyperbolic jokes between the three of them, Chris doesn’t become the predatory non-monogamist to their poster-worthy marriage.

Except now he’s in their _house_. This isn’t a party or the adrenalin-fueled mess of the athlete’s areas at an international competition.

‘If all you think about is Yuri’s ass,’ Viktor says, slipping around Chris and sliding his hand right down the back of Yuri’s sweats, ‘what about mine? Is my ass not good enough for you anymore?’

‘Your ass,’ Chris says, readjusting his assessment of the situation quickly, ‘has always been too good for me.’ That comes out a little too sincere, a little too close to the edges of what-once-was-and-might-have-been. Viktor’s expression says that’s not lost on him, but the moment vanishes as Yuri wriggles out of Viktor’s grasp and elbows him in the stomach.

‘Honestly, you two, can’t a man make a snack around here without getting groped from all directions?’

‘No,’ Viktor says, smacking a kiss on Yuri's cheek, at exactly the same time as Chris says,

‘Not with an ass like yours, you can’t.’

Chris catches Viktor’s eye, and all three of them dissolve into laughter. Chris has to lean on the counter for support, and Viktor does the same on Yuri’s other side. Yuri, snack abandoned, curls one arm around each of their waists. It almost turns sweet, and then Viktor yelps in a way that Chris knows means he’s been tickled without warning. Yuri’s a beat slower with Chris, by which time Chris is ready to retaliate. Yuri wriggles out from between them and flees, Viktor chasing after him. 

Chris wonders what he was doing in the kitchen in the first place, in order to go back to it, but then Viktor’s calling from the main room ‘I got him, I got him, Chris, hurry up and get his feet, his feet are very ticklish!’

Some days, things really can be that easy.

* * *

Yuri and Viktor, it transpires, get roped in to help around the inn in really busy periods. The week of the foreign wedding is one of those: the couple are Japanese by descent but not birth or citizenship, and their various friends and relatives seem to come from all corners of the globe and speak every language under the sun - except, invariably, for the one any given person needs to speak to the person right next to them at the time.

Yuri, for all his basic social awkwardness, proves surprisingly smooth at sorting out multi-lingual administrative problems. Viktor, whose Japanese is still far from ideal and who tends to fix problems by smashing his way through them if at all possible, is banished to the kitchen. Chris, growing bored of afternoons at home with Makkachin after a few days, tags along to see what Viktor in a hospitality-grade kitchen looks like.

It looks like Viktor hauling dishes in and out of an industrial dishwasher and up to his armpits in suds cleaning things that can’t be put in said dishwasher. Chris, who had come with half a mind to help, elects to sit on the bench and offer helpful commentary. Most of this commentary is to the tune of how domestic labour suits Viktor, but surely it could be improved with a floral apron. Cornflower blue, to accent his eyes.

‘Careful,’ Viktor says, waving a newly-sparkling soup ladle in Chris’ direction. ‘My ego is very fragile, and those who puncture it get no blintzes!’

‘Your ego is as delicate as a steel boot,’ Chris says. ‘But what was that about blini?’

‘Blintzes,’ Viktor corrects him. ‘And didn’t I tell you? I’m cooking family dinner. Hiroko has been cooking Japanese banquet food all week, I wanted to give her a break.’

‘You really are the model daughter-in-law,’ Chris says, but there’s no heat to the swipe. Model anything-in-law, really. Viktor really loves the Katsukis, and it’s hard to make fun of it when they clearly make him so happy.

‘For that, you’re helping me with the fillings,’ Viktor says. He rummages in the pantry for a moment, and comes out with a bag in each hand, one of onions and one of potatoes. ‘Take your pick: potato peel or onion tears?’

Chris takes the onions. He’s busy showing off his culinary skills (no grandson of Nonna Giacometti roughly chops his vegetables, on pain of, well, more chopping) when Mari bangs her way into the kitchen, holding the cordless phone from the inn’s reception.

‘Chris?’ She looks frazzled - but all the Katsukis do, this week, as soon as they’re out of sight of customers. This is an unforseen upside to Chris having moved to Viktor and Yuri’s place: he no longer counts as a customer, and he feels oddly touched to be allowed back in on the family side of the equation. ‘There’s someone on the phone for you. A lady, from your home.’

Chris peels the kitchen gloves off and holds out his hand for the phone. ‘Thanks,’ he says, remembering to be polite to Mari even through his concern. There aren’t many people who would both want to speak to him and know enough to figure out where he is and how to call the Katsukis, and none of the reasons they might be calling him are good. 

‘Âlo? This is Chris.’

‘What the hell have you done with your mobile phone, Giacometti?’ There’s only one woman in the world that voice could belong to.

‘Annalies?’ Chris feels himself tense up instantly. Viktor, next to him, slips with the potato peeler and scatters peel two feet forward across the worktop. ‘My phone. Um. It’s out of battery?’

‘For a week?’ Annalies has many fine qualities, and, unfortunately for Chris, her lack of tolerance for bullshit is one of them.

‘I may have, um, decided not to turn it on,’ Chris admits.

‘You’re an idiot, Giacometti.’

‘No argument here. Now, what can I do for you, Anna?’

‘You can call your Nonna,’ Anna says, ‘and tell her where the hell you are, because she called Théo looking for you when you didn’t answer your phone, and then cried when he said he didn’t know where you’d gone.’

‘She did?’ Chris mentally calculates when he’d last called Nonno or Nonna - or his parents, for that matter - and yes, it had been well before his abrupt decision to fly out here. Come to think of it, he hasn’t even updated Facebook, or instagram, or _anything_. ‘Wait, how did _you_ find me?’

‘Your friend Viktor posted a picture last week.’

‘You follow Viktor’s instagram?’ Viktor himself, once again master of the potato peeler, looks alarmed. This is a sensible response for any man associated in any way with Anna, even at two removes.

‘No,’ Anna says, in that overly-patient voice that means she’s fast running out of patience. ‘I thought about who you were most likely to go to if you wanted to avoid your problems, and then I googled him.’

‘Ouch,’ Chris says. ‘Fair.’ Anna doesn’t say anything for a moment, so he figures it’s his job. ‘I’ll call Nonna. I’m sorry you had to deal with this, Anna.’

‘It’s not me taking calls from your family,’ Anna says. Oh, now she’s angry. Not hot angry, that Chris could work with. This is flat, cold anger. The kind you get when someone’s hurt someone you love.

‘I know,’ Chris says. ‘How is he?’

‘He’s fine. You should ask him that yourself.’

‘Did he… did he _delegate_ calling me to you?’ The thought suddenly makes Chris feel queasy. Théo and Anna do that kind of thing, sometimes: where Chris likes to be taken down and roughed around, Anna likes to take orders. Mostly innocuous stuff, tasks someone had to do anyway. Anna says at least this way she’s got a man who pays attention to the chore roster and thanks her for doing housework. Mostly they keep it private, and it has _never_ strayed into either of their relationships with Chris before.

‘No.’ Anna says, and she sounds insulted. ‘I volunteered, shit-for-brains, because against all my better judgement I’m worried about you. Téo was going to leave you to keep screwing up with your own family, and I can’t say I blame him.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes, _oh_ ,’ Anna echoes. 

‘Is he… is he with you?’ Chris isn’t sure what he wants to hear. He’ll be mortified if Théo is there, and if he is Chris will have to speak to him, but that seems like the easiest way to get over that hurdle.

‘No,’ Anna says. ‘And if he was I wouldn’t put him on. You owe him an apology, Christophe, and you’ve got to pick up your own damn phone to do it.’

‘I will,’ Chris says. ‘Really, Anna, I will.’

‘Will you?’

‘I…’ he assesses his recent track record. ‘Will he want to hear it?’ _Will he want me back_ is what he means, but he can’t say that.

‘Chris, I don’t know what he’ll say _after_ you’ve apologised, but he’ll listen to the apology.’

‘Oh.’

‘Some things can be forgiven but not repaired, Chris. Don’t call unless you you think you can deal with that.’

‘I’ll call,’ Chris promises. ‘Soon. Just… not yet.’

‘Get your shit sorted out, Giacometti.’ Chris thinks she’s going to hang up on that, but then she adds, ‘We do miss you.’ 

And _then_ she hangs up, before Chris has time to assemble a response.

Viktor, who has finished peeling potatoes by now, studiously devotes himself to grating them. Chris puts his gloves back on and picks up the chopping knife again. It’s a good knife: his Nonna would hate it - it’s too straight for the rapid rocking-slicing she uses - but Chris has never mastered dicing-at-the-speed-of-light. It’s definitely better than the scrappy second-hand tools he’s got in his flat.

‘How much of that did you catch?’ Chris asks, not looking at Viktor.

‘Some,’ Viktor says. ‘I wasn’t trying to, I just…’

‘The Japanese hasn’t driven out all your French, I take it?’

‘Mais non,’ Viktor says, in the most outrageous accent he can manage. He sounds like the cartoon skunk from the Bugs Bunny cartoons. Then, more seriously, he says, ‘You didn’t tell your friends where you were going?’

‘Or my family.’

Viktor lets that sit for a moment, while he changes potatoes. Chris isn’t sure what he’s expecting next: possibly a demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing, taking off to a foreign country without leaving any means of contact.

What he gets is the question: ‘Why did you come here, Chris?’

Chris considers, and discards, a few obvious answers. There’s ‘hot springs for recovery’, and ‘cheap tickets to Japan’, both clearly facile. There’s ‘I needed to be around other skaters’, which is sort of true, but would need an explanation about why he hasn’t spoken to anyone from his home rink for months. There’s ‘because you’re my friends and I trust you,’ which, he has to concede, isn’t wrong. 

Instead, he turns the question back on Viktor. ‘Remember the time your dog ate the pastries?’

‘Steamed buns,’ Viktor says. ‘But yes.’

‘Why’d you call _me_ from the airport?’

Viktor stops grating the potato and closes his eyes for a second. ‘Well, I mean, Yuri was supposed to be asleep by that time,’ he starts.

‘And it was him you were freaking out about,’ Chris adds.

‘Oh. Yeah.’ Viktor actually laughs at himself. ‘Wow, I was an idiot, wasn’t I?’

‘Very much so. But why’d you call _me_ about it?’ Chris thinks he knows, but he wants to know if Viktor does, too.

‘I suppose…’ Viktor sucks in a breath. ‘I suppose because you already knew I was an idiot. I thought I’d fucked everything up, and I thought… you’d already seen me fuck up all kinds of things.’

‘Pretty sure we fucked things up _together_ ,’ Chris says. ‘But yeah. That.’ Chris can see Viktor thinking that one through. He adds, ‘I have been… a spectacular asshole. To people I care about.’

‘You came here because I already know you’re an asshole?’ Vikor asks. Proving he’s an excellent human being, he does not specify the very particular ways in which Viktor Nikiforov knows Chris can be an asshole, ways that are known to very few in their sport, even the other people Chris has slept with over the years. ‘I’m not sure if that’s the most depressing or the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.’

‘Both,’ Chris says, scraping the last of his diced onions into a tidy pile. ‘Definitely both.’

* * *

‘This is an intervention.’ 

Chris looks up from one of Viktor’s books to find both Yuri and Viktor standing behind him. It’s a Sunday; the wedding party all checked out of the onsen yesterday. Yuri and Viktor have been down to the rink. Tomorrow Viktor and Chris have promised to help Mari with what she described as a ‘terrifying mountain’ of linen and towels to fold, but today has been declared an afternoon off. Chris is lounging around on the couch, and Yuri and Viktor had been, last he checked, having a disgustingly domestic argument over who had put whose socks into mismatched pairs.

‘A what?’

Viktor is carrying Chris’ phone.

‘An intervention,’ he says, coming over and holding it out. ‘You need to call your boyfriend.’

‘Not sure he’s my boyfriend anymore,’ Chris says. He doesn’t take the phone.

‘Which is why you need to call him,’ Yuri says, slipping past Viktor and perching on the arm of the sofa. ‘To find out.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Chris tries to say. ‘You don’t know what I…’

‘Because you haven’t told us,’ Viktor says. He reaches out, removes the book from Chris’ hand, and puts the phone firmly into Chris’ palm in its place. ‘Which,’ he adds, ‘you don’t have to do. But we can’t sit around and watch you sabotage yourself any more.’

‘I.’ Chris stares at the phone. Thinks about the time difference, and, damn them, they’ve chosen a time when Théo will be awake, and probably not at work. Thinks about _call me when you’re ready to quit being an asshole_.

‘I can’t.’ He finds himself looking up at Viktor, reaching out with his free hand. ‘Please, I can’t…’

Viktor takes his hand and squeezes it gently. ‘You can. We’ll be just there,’ he nods toward the kitchen. ‘I’m making sweets.’

‘Now he’s retired,’ Yuri says, shaking his head fondly, ‘his answer to all problems is to cook something.’

The habit is so like Théo that Chris can’t keep looking at Viktor: the comparison hurts too much. 

‘I’m…’ Chris hesitates over the truth. It feels redundant to say it: it’s perfectly obvious. ‘I’m afraid. Of what he’s going to say. I’m going to deserve it, but…’

‘You’ve got to do it anyway,’ Viktor says. He’s still holding Chris’ hand. ‘You know that, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘We can’t fix this one for you, or,’ Viktor looks across at Yuri, and back at Chris. ‘Or we would.’

‘I can stay with you, though,’ Yuri says, and the look of surprise Viktor shoots him says this wasn’t part of their intervention plan. ‘What?’ he says, to Viktor. ‘I don’t speak French, it’s not like I’d be eavesdropping. He doesn’t want to be alone. Do you, Chris?’

‘No.’ Chris looks helplessly from one of them to the other. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘Chris.’ Viktor squeezes his hand again. ‘I…’ He gives up on whatever he was going to say, and lets Chris’ hand fall. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen.’ 

Yuri catches Viktor’s free hand as he goes, kisses his knuckles, and lets him go. Then he and Chris stare at each other for a moment.

‘Call him,’ Yuri says. ‘I’ll be right here.’

It’s easier than Chris expected, to swipe through contacts and dial, with Yuri watching him. And it’s easier than he expected to blurt out, pretty much as soon as Théo picks up the phone,

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I said and I’m sorry it’s taken me this fucking long to call.’

Théo is silent on the other end of the phone for a moment. Then he says ‘Okay. Okay. Hi, Chris.’

‘Hi,’ Chris says, and he just about manages not to cry. ‘I’m really fucking sorry.’

‘Which bit for?’ Théo asks. ‘Because I’ve got a list.’

‘Um. Can I say all of them?’

‘No.’

‘Well, the being an asshole about your career breakdown was a particular low point,’ Chris says.

‘Agreed.’

Yuri has his own phone out and has been swiping desultorily. At about this point, he shifts down onto the couch, and tries to move Chris’ leg into his lap. Only Chris’ leg still doesn’t bend as easily as normal legs, so it hurts, and Chris bites back a yelp.

Théo, on the other end of the line, asks ‘Chris? Est-ce que ca va?’ at the same time as Yuri raises his hands in apology, muttering ‘Daijobu? You’re okay?’. The languages fall over each other in Chris’ head, and it takes a moment to sort them out.

‘Yes, yes,’ Chris says, in English, and extends his leg into Yuri’s lap properly. ‘I’m okay.’ And then, switching languages again, ‘Sorry, Théo, that was Yuri moving my leg without warning.’

‘Yuri and Viktor are there?’ Théo asks. He’s been more gentle than Chris expected, so far, but his voice goes flatter, colder, with that.

‘Just Yuri,’ Chris says. ‘Viktor’s in the kitchen. Yuri doesn’t speak French, we thought…’ he lets the sentence trail off again. ‘I’m a coward,’ he says, self-deprecating, ‘and I needed moral support.’

Yuri, who has gone back to his phone, chooses this moment to wrap his fingers around Chris’ ankle. It steadies him, anchors him.

‘Right,’ Théo says. ‘Where were we?’

‘Apologies,’ Chris says. ‘Let me see. I was an asshole when you used the safeword,’ Chris goes on. ‘And I think I was being an asshole in general. Most of the time. And you’re right about,’ he swallows, ‘the sex thing.’

‘What about the sex thing?’ Théo asks. Chris can’t really tell what he’s thinking: Théo’s not shutting him down, which is good, but the questions aren’t really inviting, either.

‘The. Um. We used to have sex that wasn’t just about the pain, and I changed it, without checking with you.’

‘Mmm-hmm,’ Théo agrees. There’s a moment’s silence, just Yuri rubbing the bone of Chris’ ankle gently with his thumb. ‘You know what I think your problem is, Chris?’

‘What?’ Chris really doesn’t want to hear this, but he owes Théo that much.

‘You won’t let people - I mean, me, but not just me - _care_ about you. You shut me down in every way but that one, like the only thing you will allow yourself to take from me is the one where I hurt you.’

‘It’s…’ Chris swallows. ‘That’s not nothing. That’s… it’s important, you know that, right? Call it catharsis, if you want.’

‘I know _that_ ,’ Théo says, short. ‘There’s a difference between catharsis and reducing your dom to the vehicle for your self-destruction mission.’

‘Oh.’ Chris breathes in carefully to steady himself. ‘I. Okay. That’s fair.’ There’s another silence. ‘I get it. I shouldn’t have put that on you. I’m… what can I say?’

‘Not much,’ Théo says, slowly. ‘What’s done is done. I shouldn’t have let you get so far with it.’

‘Okay.’ Chris doesn’t have much more to say. ‘I’m sorry.’ More silence. He swipes at his eyes with his free hand. ‘What do I… what do I do now?’

‘I don’t know,’ Théo says. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘What do _I_ want? You’re the one who…’

‘No,’ Théo cuts in. ‘I’m not making the next decision for you.’

Fuck. Chris sorts through his mental projections for this conversation. Most of them involve him being hung up on, dramatically. A few involve tearful confessions of undying love. 

‘I guess going back to where we were is out of the question?’

‘Where we were was shit,’ Théo says, bluntly. He can hear Annalies’s influence in the intonation.

‘I don’t… I miss you.’

‘Okay. When do you get back?’

‘Ten days.’

‘Come and see me. Have dinner with me. We’ll talk.’

Everything inside Chris untwists rapidly, and he hiccoughs embarrassingly. ‘Does that mean you…’

‘Forgive you?’ Théo says. ‘Yes. Trust you? That… will need work.’

‘Okay.’ Chris gives up on pretending he’s not crying. ‘Okay. Thank you.’

‘Call me before you leave Japan, then. And say hi to your friends.’ Théo pauses for a second. ‘If you’re letting _them_ care for you, that’s probably good. Try not to be an asshole to them, too, Chris.’

‘Duly noted,’ Chris says. ‘Non-asshole protocols: initiated.’

‘About time.’ Chris can practically hear Théo rolling his eyes. ‘Bye, Chris.’

Chris is barely through echoing good-bye himself when Théo hangs up. 

‘Chris?’ Yuri leans forward a little, and the hand that had been stroking Chris’ ankle extends, hesitantly, for Chris to reach out and grasp. ‘Is… are you okay?’

Chris realises his face is streaming with tears and he can’t really breathe properly. He takes the hand Yuri is holding out. 

‘Yes,’ he says. It comes out very teary. ‘I’m okay. It’s... probably okay.’

‘You… don’t seem okay.’ Yuri wraps both of his hands around Chris’. ‘What can I…?’

Chris gives in to impulse, swings his legs free of the couch, and swivels around to slump against Yuri’s chest. Yuri puts his arms around Chris, cradles the back of his head, and lets Chris cry into his shirt.

‘It’s okay,’ he says, into the cotton of what might actually be one of Viktor’s old shirts. ‘We’re going to talk when I get home. It’s okay.’

‘Hey, hey.’ Yuri says, rubbing the back of Chris’ neck. ‘It’s okay. You did well.’ This is so incredibly, exactly, what Chris wants to hear right now that he has no shame about arching into Yuris’ hand, begging with all the body language he can muster for more comfort. Yuri continues petting him and saying things that aren’t in English but sound comforting all the same. 

After a bit, Chris sits up, feeling more than slightly foolish, and goes to wipe his eyes. Yuri catches one of his hands by the wrist, strokes down Chris’ cheek with his free hand, and leans in and kisses him.

It is, without a doubt, and measured against Chris’ fairly extensive experience, a good kiss. Unusually so, for a first kiss. It’s also exactly the right kind of kiss for how Chris feels right now: Yuri’s hand on his cheek is firm, and the kiss isn’t hesitant, but it is gentle. Chris melts, reaches out for Yuri with the hand Yuri isn’t already holding, kisses him back. 

This lasts long enough for Chris’ brain to register that, one, he is kissing _Viktor’s husband_ , and two, he wants this. He’s kissing Yuri Katsuki and he wants to be, wants to keep kissing Yuri and letting Yuri hold him and -

Fuck.

Chris scrambles backward; Yuri startles, grabs for him again, then lets him go.

‘Chris,’ he says, ‘hey. Chris. Was that…?’

Chris is forced to make a dignified exit, by virtue of the fact that he can’t simply up and flee. He has to find his cane, and walk across the room at a steady pace, because now is not time to tempt whatever fates govern whether or not his knee holds up.

‘Let’s pretend that never happened,’ he says, looking down at Yuri for a moment before he goes. 

Of course, Viktor chooses that moment to come in from the kitchen with a plate of what seems to be pancakes shaped like clams.

‘I made Doraemon pancakes!’ he crows, evidently very pleased with himself. And then, when no one says anything, he looks from Chris to Yuri.

‘Guys, what… is everything okay?’

Chris makes a split-second decision and opts for protecting the guy who’d held him through the toughest phone call he’s made in a long time, over preserving what little reason he has left to feel worthy of Viktor’s trust.

‘Everything’s fine,’ he says. ‘Théo and I are… fine. Or we will be. I’m just… really tired now.’

‘Okay,’ Viktor says. ‘Would a pancake help?’

‘Uh. Not right now?’ If Chris can make an innocuous escape to the spare room, he can regroup. Prepare for when Yuri inevitably tells Viktor, and then Chris should leave. Leave the house. Possibly the country.

‘Chris?’ Yuri looks a little shell-shocked, but surprisingly calm, for a man who’s been kissing his husband’s ex. Or not ex, actually, since he and Viktor were never really _dating_. His husband’s something, anyway. ‘Chris, would you sit down?’ Chris really wants to tell him no, but before he can, Yuri adds, ‘Please.’

Chris sits down. In the armchair furthest from the couch. With his cane across his knees: a self-defensive posture that even his addled brain recognises as one favoured by the kind of dom who likes their sub to grovel before punishment. Except that such a dom is usually busy running off at the mouth, perfecting his evil-overlord rhetoric, while Chris couldn’t speak right now for the life of him.

He has no idea what comes now. Possibly they all eat clam-shaped pancakes and pretend nothing happened. Possibly Yuri flings himself at Viktor’s feet and confesses, and Chris has to watch. If the latter, Chris think’s it’s both terrible payback for what Yuri just did for him, and sort of perfect poetic justice.

The thing is, it’s one thing to clown around with them in public, knowing the happy couple go back to their hotel room and he to his (or to a nightclub, or someone _else_ ’s room, as the case may be). It’s another matter entirely when Chris is in their house, and he. He really loves being here: finds satisfaction in helping each of them in turns with chores; walks their dog in the mornings; trusts them both enough to let them shepherd him into exercising, swimming, and so on. He even likes, most nights, going to bed in the spare room, comfortable in the knowledge that they’re nearby, loving each other with the sort of steady consistency that’s the stuff of lifetimes, rather than fairytales. It’s like there’s a surplus of it, and if he moulds himself into the shape of their life, he can bask in the edges of it.

Of course, he had that and more with Théo and Annalies, and what had he done except fuck it up? 

Chris isn’t actually sure how long he spends contemplating impending and past disasters. Long enough, apparently, for Viktor and Yuri to have exchanged Significant Looks. Or possibly telepathy, for all Chris knows. All he knows is Viktor puts the pancakes down on a side table and says,

‘Ah. Yuri, did you…?’

‘Yes.’

‘I take it you didn’t _talk_ to him first?’

‘He was _crying_ ,’ Yuri says, defensively.

Viktor stares at Yuri for a second, and then sits down on the arm of the sofa. ‘Just so you know, Yuri, I am never letting you live that down.’

It dawns on Chris that not only has Viktor deduced that Yuri kissed him, he also seems to have been expecting it. Unless, of course, he thinks something completely different happened, in which case Chris is fucked, because he can’t keep up a pretense if he doesn’t know what it is.

‘Wait,’ Chris says. ‘You two. You…’ He decides to risk exploding everything. ‘Viktor, Yuri kissed me.’

‘Evidently so,’ Viktor says. He doesn’t seem entirely pleased, but he’s also not throwing either Chris or Yuri out of the house. Chris is definitely missing some vital piece of information here. ‘He didn’t talk to you about it first?’

Chris shakes his head, unwilling to say anything further until he knows what the hell is going on.

‘Who negotiates kissing first?’ Yuri asks. He’s actually pouting.

‘Sensible people?’ Viktor suggests. _Married people_ , Chris thinks, but does not say. ‘Chris’ people. I did _research_.’ Viktor announces that like it’s the clinching argument to everything.

‘And I actually _know_ people who’ve kissed Chris,’ Yuri counters. ‘Including you. And Phichit.' He turns to Chris. ‘Isn’t that how it normally goes? Establish interest in kissing _first_ , work out logistics _later_?’

‘I, ah, yes?’ Chris rakes his memory. ‘Sometimes logistics a _lot_ later. But I… you. I don’t normally with…’ he waves a hand vaguely at Yuri and Viktor. ‘With married people?’ This isn’t true, actually, but close enough: he’s messed around with monogamous couples before, but only ones who were really… young. Early in their relationships. He’s got a very sensible policy against being anyone’s seven-year-itch. 

‘Huh.’ Yuri says, and thinks about it for a moment. ‘Well I have, and…’

‘And you probably _should_ have talked about that first,’ Viktor cuts in.

Yuri waves a hand. ‘To you, at least.’ Like this is a minor concern and not a completely paradigm-shifting pronouncement that means Chris has to completely re-adjust his perception of both Yuri and Viktor.

‘I think I’m missing some really important pieces of information here,’ Chris says. He realises his knuckles are going white, clutching the cane.

Viktor looks at Yuri, raising his eyebrows, evidently passing the buck to him.

‘Chris, I…’ Yuri stops. ‘I had a whole speech. And now I’ve forgotten it. I. I’m sorry if it wasn’t okay to kiss you. I just. I really wanted to, and… you didn’t seem to mind?’

Chris closes his eyes. Forces his hands to loosen their death grip on the cane. ‘It’s not really whether I mind that’s the problem here, Yuri.’ He considers, and then qualifies. ‘I do mind, but it’s not… on your account alone.’

It’s Viktor who speaks next, and he starts with, ‘I appreciate that, Chris.’ He’s smiling, but there’s a funny twist to it. ‘But it’s okay. Yuri wants you, and I… I think I’m okay with that.’

Chris stares at them both for a moment. Yuri has his hands balled up into fists in his lap. Viktor has one hand resting on Yuri’s shoulder, more reassuring than staking a claim.

‘You. You’ve _planned_ this?’ Chris says. He really should have figured this out before now, but it’s just so very counter to everything he expects from Viktor. Or Yuri.

‘Not _planned_ ,’ Yuri says. ‘Planning without consulting you would be rude.’

‘Talked about it,’ Viktor qualifies. ‘I believe the specific words were something like “don’t you want to kiss him until he stops being stupid?”’

‘Believe me, if that was a cure for stupidity, I’d be much less of a mess right now,’ Chris says.

‘Not a cure, perhaps,’ Yuri says, and a tiny smile sneaks onto his features. ‘A treatment. Palliative stupidity treatment.’

Fuck. He’s simultaneously adorable and incredibly attractive, and a large part of Chris would like nothing more than to crawl over and lay his head in Yuri’s lap. He doesn’t even think he’d put up a fight, just roll over, bare his throat, and let Yuri get at all his vulnerabilities at once.

There’s still Viktor, though. Chris looks up at him, and he. Well. Chris has definitely dated people whose partners are less comfortable than Viktor looks right now. If it were anyone else, he’d take it as their own damn problem to fix. But this is Viktor, and the line of tension in his shoulders stands out to Chris like a siren on a quiet night.

‘And you?’ Chris asks him. ‘Viktor?’

Viktor shrugs. ‘That’s where the logistics comes in, I guess? I... I was hoping you’d have some solution. What do you _usually_ do in situations like this? You and Annalies, you’re friends, right?’

‘Yes,’ Chris says. He tries to imagine Viktor and Anna in comparable positions in his life. It’s weird, but it almost works.

‘When you’re with Théo, she doesn’t have to pretend it’s not happening, does she?’ Viktor’s adam’s apple bobs. ‘You work out… schedules and things.’

‘Well, yeah,’ Chris says, ‘but that’s different. Théo and I go back much longer than Théo and she do. You do things differently when it’s two long-term relationships, as opposed to…’ he looks over at Yuri. ‘Whatever this is. Could be.’

‘Which is what, exactly?’ Viktor asks. He and Yuri are both looking at Chris like he’s the fucking non-monogamy guru, here to provide the answers.

Chris runs through a couple of scenarios in his head, and rapidly realises all of the sane ones involve him moving back to the inn. Or better yet, some other inn, where he won’t have to explain things to Mari. And Viktor… he can’t see any way this isn’t going to drive a wedge between him and Viktor.

‘Nothing,’ he says. Yuri blanches. ‘I’m sorry, Yuri. But Viktor, I.’ He draws in a breath. ‘It’s a goddamn miracle we’re still friends, after the shit I put you through, but I’m so fucking glad we are. And I won’t put that second to anything. Even your undeniably attractive husband.’ They sit there, for a moment: Yuri looking not at Chris, but at Viktor. Viktor’s shoulders are curled in, like this hurts him to hear. Chris feels like he’s been kicked in the guts by a horse he really liked. ‘I’m…’ and damn it, his voice cracks on the words. ‘I’m surprised you’d think I would.’

‘Chris…’ Viktor says, and he looks absolutely cut up. Chris runs back over what he just said, trying to find the point that could be _more_ upsetting to Viktor than the prospect of Yuri and Chris together without him.

‘Go,’ Yuri says, and elbows Viktor off the couch. Viktor stumbles, startled, and crosses the not-actually-very-big space between the couch and Chris’ armchair. Chris finds himself staring down at Viktor Nikiforov, who is kneeling beside Chris’ good knee, and has wrapped his hands over Chris’ on the cane, which Chris is still clutching across his lap like the safety bar on a carnival ride.

‘Chris,’ Viktor says, all choked up. ‘You’re one of my best friends, you know that?’

Chris nods dumbly, and wonders when a conversation about the boundaries of Viktor and Yuri’s marriage turned into the Chris and Viktor Fountain of Feelings Show. He’s really not sure he wouldn’t have preferred the Tearful Monogamous Spouse Confessions version. His relationship with Viktor works because there are some things they just don’t try to put in words.

‘Have you any idea how hard it’s been to see you so closed down?’ Viktor asks. Chris nods, wishing he didn’t have to hear this. It’s been the theme of the last six damn months: it’s hard for everyone else to deal with Chris right now. 

‘Until now I’d have said you were dealing with it pretty well,’ he says, and can’t keep the bitter edge out of his voice. ‘Better than some.’

‘Because you’re not actively trying to push us out,’ Yuri says, and Chris looks up from Viktor’s face to his. If he’s hurt about Chris shutting down the proposition, such as it was, Chris can’t see it. ‘Isn’t that the difference?’

‘True,’ Chris concedes, and marks up in his mental scoreboard that the last comment was unfair to Théo, and his parents, and practically everyone he knows, as well as to Viktor.

‘You trust us,’ Viktor says, and he peels Chris’ near hand off the cane, pressing it to his chest in the kind of ridiculous gesture only Viktor can get away with. ‘That… means a lot to me, Chris.’

Chris tries to figure out how that’s different from what he said just now. He can’t.

‘And if you think you can trust Yuri,’ Viktor goes on, still holding Chris’ hand pressed to his chest. ‘If you’ll let him give you more, then I… I want you to. Please, Chris. Let us look after you.’ He stops for a moment, evidently reconsidering. ‘Let Yuri look after you. He’s good at that.’

‘Unless you really _don’t_ want… want to,’ Yuri puts in, and Chris is pretty sure he hears ‘want me’ get swallowed under the ‘want to.’

Chris mentally rewinds back through this bizarre conversation, and finds the glaring unstated assumption Yuri and Viktor are sharing and which he, since the ‘not with married people’ part, hasn’t questioned either. 

He lets go of the cane entirely, tips Viktor’s face up, and kisses him. Viktor makes a surprised ‘mmmph’ type noise, clutches Chris’ hand tighter and grabs Chris’ shoulder with his own free hand. Viktor kisses him back like he’d gladly drown in it, all open and utterly yielding. This is not how people normally kiss Chris, but it has a definite appeal.

At some point, Viktor comes to his senses, pulls back, and sort of falls on his ass turning around to look at Yuri. He keeps Chris’ hand in his, though. Chris looks over at Yuri and shrugs. He’s either made everything better or three times worse. Now they get to find out which.

Yuri looks at them for a moment, head tilted slightly to one side, and then he breaks out in a genuinely brilliant smile.

‘See?’ he says. ‘Kissing first, logistics later.’

‘That was not,’ Viktor says, sounding a little stunned, ‘an option I considered.’

‘I did,’ Yuri says, and the brilliant smile tones down to a smirk. ‘But you seemed to think it was out of the question.’

‘He did?’ Chris looks down at Viktor, who has given up on being upright, and slumped back against the edge of Chris’ armchair. ‘Why, Viktor? If you two were plotting - okay, _talking_ ,’ he says, as Yuri starts to protest the _plotting_ implication, ‘why only Yuri?’

‘Viktor seemed to think your, ah, history, precluded it,’ Yuri supplies. 

Viktor doesn’t offer anything further. Chris pokes him.

‘Viktor? You still think that?’

‘Well,’ Viktor says, ‘why would you want to, how do they say, cross the same bridge twice?’

‘Ten years, Viktor,’ Chris says. ‘It’s not the same bridge anymore.’ He’s pretty sure Viktor’s butchered the idiom, but he doesn’t care.

‘Evidently,’ Viktor says.

‘There’s two bridges, for a start,’ Yuri says. ‘Unless…’ He bites his lip, one of his habitual nervous tells.

Chris takes a second to catch up and realise that Yuri is considering the possibility that he, Chris, wants Viktor _instead_ of Yuri.

‘Oh, hell, no,’ Chris says. ‘You can both have me, or not at all.’ 

‘Okay,’ Yuri says, at the same time as Viktor presses Chris’ hand to his mouth. ‘Ah. Logistics, then?’

‘Any way you want me,’ Chris says. Extends his free hand in a surrender gesture. ‘I give up, I’m all yours.’ A second’s consideration. ‘For ten days, I guess. Or half an hour, if that’s all...’

Yuri covers his hand with his mouth, hiding a giggle.

‘You shouldn’t make offers like that,’ Viktor says, looking up at Chris with a spark of mischief in his eyes. ‘Someone might take advantage.’

‘Safeword’s Bonaparte, Nikiforov,’ Chris says, and is surprised to find that doesn’t hurt as much as it might.

‘Good to know,’ Yuri says, and gets up from the couch. It’s not quite a stalk, the way he crosses the room, but it’s pretty close. There’s a controlled determination to the way he holds himself that Chris has only ever seen on the ice, and was pretty happy assuming he only ever _would_ see on the ice. He is suddenly very, very pleased to change that assumption.

Yuri cups Chris’ jaw and tilts his face up. The other hand, Chris catches in his peripheral vision, goes to rest on the top of Viktor’s head, in a sort of benediction.

‘In this house,’ Yuri says, ‘we take _No_ as a safeword. And _stop_.’

‘Nyet, nein, halt, non, iie, dame, hyud and detén,’ Viktor fills in, like it’s a rehearsed mantra. ‘We are equipped to stop in many languages.’

‘Right,’ Chris says, trying to square the way Yuri’s obviously in control of the situation with the relatively facile _no is a safeword_ stance. ‘But… you guys know about safewords, right? It’s not just for…’ he trails off, stops, just in case somehow Yuri and Viktor don’t _know_ about games with consent and non-consent. He tries again. ‘Sometimes it’s… easier if you have something other than _no_ to say.’

‘Oh, we know,’ Yuri says. He grips Chris’ jaw a little tighter. ‘But this is not negotiable, Chris: if you say no, or anything vaguely _resembling_ no, in any language we speak and probably most of the ones we don’t, we stop. At least long enough to re-group. And if you’re unsure, or _we’re_ unsure if you’re sure, or there’s any kind of… communication break down, things stop. Is that clear?’

Chris nods.

Yuri bends down and speaks into Chris’ ear. ‘What that means is, Chris, that if you want this… if you want us… you have to trust us enough to say so.’

Holy fuck, Chris thinks. He’s never met anyone who can make _I refuse to fight you for dominance_ sound that hot. 

‘I want you to kiss me again,’ he says, because, one, he does, and two, that seems like a relatively safe starting place.

‘Good.’ Yuri leans in and kisses him, holding Chris in place with the hand on his jaw. This one is still firm-yet-gentle, but his fingers dig in, promising more. Chris doesn’t really mean to, but he whines when Yuri pulls away too soon. Viktor squeezes his hand, like he understands Chris is bereft. He probably does.

‘Any way we want you?’ Yuri asks.

‘Yes,’ Chris says. Yuri keeps looking at him, like he’s waiting for a caveat. ‘Yes, please, yes. If you come up with something I don’t want I promise I’ll tell you.’

‘Good,’ Yuri says, and lets him go. ‘I want pancakes.’

Chris and Viktor both stare at him for a second.

‘What?’ Yuri asks. ‘We can make out, or… other stuff, later. Pancakes are better fresh.’

Viktor drops his head to Chris’ thigh. ‘You see what I have to put up with?’ he asks.

Yuri sits back down on the couch. ‘Viktor,’ he says. ‘You made the pancakes. You should bring Chris one.’

Viktor unfolds himself from the floor and goes over to the side table, fetches the plate of pancakes. With a flourish, he presents them to Chris. 

‘Doraemon pancakes!’ he crows. Chris takes one. It’s actually two pancakes sandwiched together with something in between.

‘You watch too much children’s TV,’ Yuri says. ‘Chris, they’re called Dorayaki. There’s red bean paste in them.’

‘It’s not my fault that’s where my comprehension level is,’ Viktor says, taking the plate to Yuri in turn. He sits down next to Yuri, holding the plate in his lap, and picks up the smallest pancake. ‘For you,’ he says, and holds it out. Chris gets the very strong impression that if he weren’t watching, Viktor would hand-feed him.

It’s funny: he’s never actually _seen_ people play like this before. Oh, he’s been at parties where some of the couples have a service-submission thing going on. He’s even been at parties where Théo had both him and Anna, like a matched set of complementary subs (the bit no one ever gets on first encounter is that it’s Anna you have to be scared of: subbing is her break from being a professional control freak, and woe betide anyone who crosses a boundary in her happy place). The thing is, at parties, people are always performing half for the audience: some people play it up, some people turn the amplitude down. Either way, it’s always a bit stylized. Chris is almost never an asshole at parties, for example.

Yuri and Viktor are absolutely aware he’s watching them, of course they are. Chris is no fool: Yuri, in particular, is showing Chris how things work around here. The fascinating thing is, it doesn’t feel staged at all. There’s no sharp division between in-scene and out. This is the same Yuri who’s had Viktor kiss his skates at major competitions since 2014 (albeit, in a concession to Viktor’s return to the rink, only ones where Viktor isn’t skating or Yuri’s skated after him). Viktor, with the pancakes in his lap, is recognisably the same Viktor who practically carried a half-asleep Yuri back into the apartment after family dinner the other night.

‘Have one,’ Yuri says, nudging Viktor.

Viktor picks up the largest one and takes a ridiculously huge bite out of it. For a split second, Chris has the sight of Viktor grinning, the lower half of his face completely obscured by a pancake sandwich. Something in Chris unknots, something he hadn’t actually known was coiled. Yuri’s Viktor, Viktor in submission, is still the same ridiculous man Chris has known his entire adult life.

 _Yes,_ Chris thinks. _I can work with this._

* * *

‘Chris?’ Yuri’s holding Chris’ wrists, thumb and forefinger wrapped around both wrists at once and almost completing the span. It’s not hard and it’s not even in an uncomfortable position but it’s doing something for Chris. A lot of somethings, really. Viktor having stepped up behind him and slipped his arms around Chris’ waist isn’t helping, either.

‘Yes?’

‘Let us take you to bed.’

 _About damn time_ , says most of Chris’ willpower. It’s been hours, literally hours, since the pancake interlude. There has been more kissing all round, and a frustrating amount of doing normal Sunday-evening things. Only now, when Chris slaps Yuri’s ass as he passes him in the kitchen, he gets grabbed and pushed back into the worktop and kissed like it’s going out of style, by way of retribution. He gets Viktor nudging up against him in the hallway and kissing him like he’s something precious and fragile. And he gets the pair of them, in the wake of eating and clearing away dinner, converging on him with great determination.

‘Bed?’ Chris manages. The bed in the spare room is a folded-out futon; they obviously mean their own bed. ‘You don’t have to…’

‘Maybe we do,’ Viktor says, rubbing up against Chris’ ass. ‘I really think we have to get undressed _very soon_.’

‘We could do that here,’ Chris points out. ‘That doesn’t require your _bed_.’

Viktor mutters some other objection, but Yuri steps back slightly and touches Chris’ face.

‘Chris?’ 

There’s a moment’s pause, until Chris says, ‘Yes?’

‘Was that a suggestion you’re not comfortable with?’

‘I just…’ Chris hates this, hates being caught between _wanting_ and uncertainty. It’s one reason he’s usually a brat, pushes people until they push back. It’s a good way of finding out where someone’s real priorities are. ‘You know you don’t have to.’ Neither Yuri nor Viktor say anything, so he goes on, getting faster and faster, words falling over each other on their way out of his mouth. ‘I mean that’s not a requirement of the, you know, arrangement. Lots of couples keep their bedroom for themselves, have lovers elsewhere. I don’t want to -’

At this point, Yuri shoots a look at Viktor, over Chris’ shoulder, and Viktor plants his palm firmly over Chris mouth. He yanks Chris’ head back, just a little bit rough, and Chris’ breath catches.

‘No one here is a blushing innocent,’ Viktor says, into the soft skin under Chris’ jaw. ‘It’s very sweet you’re trying to protect us, but stop it.’

‘Chris, I’m going to ask you again. You don’t have to say yes, but you _can_ ,’ Yuri says. ‘Will you let us take you to bed?’

Chris nods, not bothering to try to speak through Viktor’s hand. 

‘Thank you,’ Yuri says. Still holding Chris’ wrists with one hand, he touches Viktor’s face with the other. ‘Viktor, take him and get him undressed, would you? I’ll be right behind you.’

Viktor wraps his hand around Chris’ wrists in place of Yuri’s and pulls Chris tight back against his chest. He doesn’t let go, just turns to walk backward into the bedroom like that. Normally, Chris would be completely down with being pull-dragged to bed with a hand over his mouth. Normally, he wouldn’t have to be thinking _where’s my cane_ , and calculating the chances that, if his knee gives out, he’ll take Viktor crashing to the floor with him.

‘Here,’ Yuri says. He’s picked the cane up from wherever Chris left it (the room is small enough and he's spent enough of the past few hours plastered up against one or both of Yuri and Viktor that he doesn’t actually need it to hand at all times). He tucks the head of the cane into Chris’ hands. Viktor keeps his grip around Chris’ wrists, and keeps hauling Chris backwards, so the cane is of approximately zero use, except insofar as now Chris knows where it is and that he _could_ be using it, if he weren’t enjoying Viktor dragging him backwards to bed. He puts exactly as much effort into walking backwards as is required to keep his leg from dragging against the floor, and no more. 

Viktor, faced with a choice between dropping Chris bodily onto the bed, shoving him face-first into it, and letting him go to arrange himself there, opts for option four: drops backward into the mattress himself, dragging Chris with him, and tries to twist them as he does. It might have worked, too: he let go of Chris’ wrists, and Chris could’ve twisted against him, grabbed for Viktor in turn, and let them both go down in a grasping, clinging pile. Except something bangs into Chris’ kneecap, and the resulting wire-against-bone-and-scar-tissue pain is instant and sickening. 

It’s a few seconds before any senses except pain receptors come back online. By that time, Chris is slightly clammy, and Viktor has scrambled half a foot back from him, babbling apologies.

‘Hey, hey,’ Chris says, reaching out for Viktor with both hands. The cane has dropped somewhere by the bed, which is fine. ‘It’s okay. Come here.’

Viktor lets himself be pulled down, still apologising. ‘I’m sorry, I forgot, I didn’t think about the knee…’ 

Chris shuts him up with a kiss, cradling Viktor’s jaw with one hand and the back of his neck with the other. He really wishes Viktor _hadn’t_ banged into his knee, because it hurts still; but by the same token, no one’s forgotten about the damn injury since he did it, and it’s sort of nice.

‘It’s okay, it just happens,’ Chris says, and scrapes his nails down the back of Viktor’s neck. ‘I can handle a bit of pain.’

‘But,’ Viktor says, and pauses. He sucks Chris’ lower lip into his mouth, and then, almost releasing it, bites down hard. Chris forgets, for a bright split second, about anything else. ‘I only want to hurt you in _good_ ways,’ Viktor says, mouthing down Chris neck, all soft kisses with only the sting in Chris’ lip to suggest he might do anything else, and then - sharp nips in the divot of Chris’ neck and shoulderblade, making him whine.

‘Do you,’ Chris says. ‘Do you really?’ He knows it’s been ten damn years, Viktor’s no more carrying a grudge than he is, but the last time they were comparing notes on each other’s sexual habits, there had been a whole thing about Viktor not wanting to hurt anyone except that Chris _asked_.

‘Oh, yes,’ Viktor says, sliding one hand under Chris’ t-shirt, skimming fingers over his hip-bone. ‘I know many, hmm,’ here he sucks a kiss into Chris’ neck, almost but not quite hard enough to bruise. ‘Many more things now.’

‘What things were you planning?’ Chris arches his back, so Viktor can haul his shirt further up and scrape his nails across Chris’ abs.

‘Oh, that depends.’ Viktor pulls back far enough to manhandle Chris out of the shirt entirely. He flashes Chris a grin. ‘I’ll have to refer that question to the boss,’ he says. ‘Did you have any requests? I have a certain amount of… influence.’

Chris cracks up laughing, and Viktor follows, dropping his head to Chris’ chest and giggling into it. Giggling _and_ pinching gently at one of Chris’ nipples, which is an admirable feat of multi-tasking.

‘I thought you were supposed to get him undressed?’ 

They both look up to find Yuri in the doorway. He’s carrying a couple of bottles of water, which he sets down on the dresser, and a few towels, which he drops on the end of the bed.

‘I, um,’ Viktor says, ‘I got distracted?’ Viktor pulls back from Chris and makes a “see?” gesture with his hands at Chris’ body.

Yuri makes no bones about checking Chris out. It’s… nice. Chris used to be pretty accustomed to being the object of this kind of admiration, but his body doesn’t feel like his own anymore. And an average day involves far more sidelong glances at Chris’ cane than at his ass, lately.

So Chris preens, a bit; props himself on his elbows and arches his neck. ‘Like what you see?’ he says, to Yuri. 

‘I really do,’ Yuri says, like this a realisation worth considering slowly. 

‘What about me?’ Viktor says, pouting.

‘What _about_ you?’ Chris asks, at the same time as Yuri says, fondly, ‘I always like looking at you, Viktor.’ Viktor’s head snaps from Chris to Yuri and back again.

‘I don’t even know which of you I was talking to,’ Viktor says, looking confused. ‘Is that… normal?’

‘Hmm, Viktor Nikiforov, demanding attention from anyone who’ll give it?’ Chris asks, exchanging looks with Yuri. ‘Sounds pretty normal to me.’

‘Fuck you, Giacometti.’ Viktor says, laughing.

‘Thought you had to talk to the boss first?’ Chris says, eyebrows raised. Viktor actually _flushes_ , and Chris grabs for him, muttering, ‘Come here, you idiot,’ and kissing him. It’s hard and sloppy and there’s a lot of teeth. It’s pretty great.

Also great is the whole-body shudder that goes through Viktor when Yuri’s hand settles on the back of his neck. 

‘ _The boss_ ,’ Yuri says, pronouncing it like the title both pleases and amuses him, ‘gave you a job to do. Do you need help?’ 

Together, Viktor and Yuri peel Chris out of his trousers, somehow managing not to make the knee any worse in the process. They end up with Chris sitting on the edge of the bed and Yuri half-kneeling over him, one knee on the bed and one foot on the ground, tipping Chris’ face up and holding him there, just an inch or so away from a kiss. 

‘How are we going to look after him, Viktor?’ Yuri asks. He’s looking right at Chris, but his tone of voice is conversational, like Chris is barely even there. ‘What do you think he needs?’

Viktor wraps himself around Yuri from behind. ‘I want,’ he says. Stops.

‘What do you want, Viktor?’ Yuri’s fingers tighten on Chris jaw when Chris goes to speak. Chris shuts up.

‘He’s into pain,’ Viktor says, voice catching. ‘I want to… can I hurt him?’

Oh, fuck, Chris thinks. He’s into people wanting to hurt him. He’s known that for years. Apparently he’s also into people _asking permission to hurt him_. That’s new. That’s new and hot as hell.

He desperately wants Yuri to say ‘yes’. Presumably Viktor does as well. Presumably Yuri knows both of these things, because his answer is, 

‘Maybe.’ 

‘Maybe he wants to do it himself,’ Chris says, looking straight at Viktor. Maybe Yuri does; maybe Yuri doesn’t. Chris mostly wants to see what reactions he’ll get, from either of them. Viktor’s eyes go wide and he presses, if possible, even closer into Yuri’s body. Yuri leans in, close enough that Chris probably could duck out of the grip on his jaw and kiss him.

‘I didn’t ask for your input yet,’ Yuri says. ‘Viktor, get your own clothes off.’

While Viktor does that, Yuri runs a hand up Chris’ torso, and around the curve of Chris’ shoulder. ‘You’re very handsome, Chris,’ he says, a little absently. Chris, bearing in mind that his input has not been sought, says nothing, and lets Yuri stroke him and press tiny kisses into his skin. When he comes back to Chris face, he rubs his knuckles across Chris’ jaw. ‘I’m glad you got rid of that beard,’ he says, and finally, finally kisses Chris’ mouth. At some point, Viktor, now divested of his clothes, slips around behind Chris so he’s sandwiched between them again, Yuri licking and biting into his mouth and Viktor tweaking sharply at his nipples. Yuri gives up on looming and settles in Chris' lap, so Chris only has to buck just a little to rub off against the fabric of Yuri’s sweats.

All of this is far too gentle, unnervingly so: and yet so, so good. Any way you want me, Chris had said, and if this is how they want him, well, he’s halfway gone already.

Consequently, he’s a little surprised when Yuri’s next words are, ‘How do you feel about spanking, Chris?’ It takes him a second or so to realise his input is being sought.

‘Positive,’ Chris says. ‘Definitely positive.’ Viktor sucks a bruise into the back of his neck.

There’s a few minutes while Yuri and Viktor fuss about, laying down the towels. Chris really wants to laugh at that, but it’s so practiced and domestic, he feels weirdly voyeuristic even seeing it. Then Yuri is sitting back against the headboard. ‘Come here,’ he says, and arranges Chris across his lap. It’s not bad, as positions go: he can’t kneel, but there’s the height of Yuri’s legs tilting his ass up. He supposes Yuri _does_ want to do the honours himself, but the next question is,

‘Viktor wants to hurt you, Chris. Should I let him?’

Chris nods, over-eager already, planting his face into the bedding and canting his hips up.

‘Give me your hands,’ Yuri says, and folds them over Chris back. So far so usual, except he laces their fingers together, Yuri’s right hand to Chris’ left. ‘You let me know if you need a break,’ he says, squeezing Chris’ hand. Right. Non-verbal communication. Whatever he and Viktor have been up to - together, or with other people, hell, Chris really does need to find out what the story is there, or he’ll die of curiosity. Except he might die first of frustrated lust, especially if there are any more diversions this evening, so he files that to ask about later. Whatever it is they’ve been up to, Yuri knows what he’s doing. Chris would call the caution overdone, for a simple spanking, but it puts something warm and fragile in his gut, and he clings to Yuri’s fingers.

‘Start light,’ Yuri says, to Viktor, who must have moved up the bed by now. Fuck. Chris has kind of stopped paying attention to anything but Yuri. ‘Just enough to sting.’

‘I have done this before,’ Viktor says, palming Chris’ ass. He squeezes, a bit, and strokes, and Chris wriggles into the touch. 

‘I know,’ Yuri says. ‘I remember.’ His voice drops a few tones, warm and pleased. ‘You’re very good at this, Viktor. Make Chris feel just as good as it does for me, okay?’ 

Chris is busy processing the fact that Viktor spanks _Yuri_ , trying to square that with the way he’s been reading them as a dom/sub pair for four or five years, and is caught by surprise by the first slap. Light, but enough to sting.

‘Chris?’ Viktor asks, hand rubbing over the spot.

Chris turns his head far enough to look up at him. ‘That all you’ve got?’

And Yuri reaches out, grabs Chris' hair and yanks. ‘Be nice,’ he says. It goes all to Chris’ head in a rush: the sharp pain in his scalp, the admonition, the fact that the back-talk comes bubbling out of his mouth unbidden. It’s like feeling coming back into a numb limb, combined with the head-spin of standing up too fast.

‘I might not,’ Chris answers, and what was meant to come out mouthy turns into a giggle, ‘if being bratty gets me handled like that.’ 

Viktor pinches the skin at the crease of Chris’ ass and thigh. It’s good, but not good enough.

‘C’mon, Nikiforov, show me what you’ve got,’ Chris says, and Yuri yanks his hair again.

‘Say please.’ 

‘Puh-leeeease,’ Chris says, all exaggerated. Yuri laughs, and tells Viktor to give him five and check again.

Holy fuck, it’s good. It’s all hot, bright _surface_ pain, nothing bone-deep and gnawing, and Chris fucking loves it. Viktor gives him five square, open-palm slaps across the meat of his ass, in fast succession.

‘Good?’ Viktor asks, when the five is done.

‘Did your pretty hand get tired?’ Chris wriggles, sticking his ass as far in the air as he can without putting weight on the bad knee.

Yuri doesn’t yank his hair again: this time he twists Chris’ arm up by the wrist, tight into the space between his shoulderblades. That means Yuri has to fold himself right over Chris’ back: he’s a small man, but all muscle, and the weight of him pushing Chris down is pretty damn good.

‘You were asked a question,’ Yuri says, into Chris’ ear. ‘Is this good, Chris? Is this what you want?’

‘Please,’ Chris says, somewhere between sarcasm and begging. ‘I can take that and more.’’

Yuri sits up a little, plants his hand firmly between Chris’ shoulderblades to hold him down. ‘I told you. You have to tell us if it’s good.’

‘Yes, please, _sir_ ,’ Chris says, ‘I want some more.’ Probably neither Yuri nor Viktor have ever seen _Oliver!_ , but he gets the intonation down perfect.

Yuri huffs. ‘It’s like he’s never even met you,’ he says, to Viktor, which seems like a non-sequitur until Yuri leans back down and hisses, ‘You have to tell him he’s doing good. You have to tell him _he’s good_.’

Ah. There’s another piece of the puzzle that is Yuri-and-Viktor, and it’s being held out to him. Chris scrapes enough willpower together to turn to look at Viktor, and, yes, sure enough, he looks wide-eyed and eager to please and basically nothing like the kind of person who normally roughs Chris up.

‘Hey,’ Chris says. ‘Viktor, it’s so good.’ His voice slurs a little on the last word, as Yuri sits up and rearranges Chris’ arms back into a comfortable position. ‘So good, Viktor. Give me more?’

Viktor kisses him, right in the dimple where his lower back meets his ass, and murmurs, ‘Of course, Chris, of course.’

Everything gets a bit blurry after that. Yuri keeps one hand tangled with Chris’ at Chris’ lower back, and Chris hangs onto it like a lifeline. Viktor spanks him, alternating quick sharp slaps with heavier, bruising ones, and working his way over the territory of Chris’ ass with practiced accuracy. A few slaps on the sensitive upper thighs, a series across his ass-cheeks, and somewhere in there Chris loses his sense of what’s happening where. He’s definitely rutting against Yuri’s leg, he knows that much.

Eventually, he finds himself whining, clutching for Yuri’s hand, but Yuri’s pulled away and so has Viktor. He turns over, flopping violently on Yuri’s legs like a particularly ungainly fish. Finds them forehead to forehead, doing that lovestruck gazing thing they do. Chris recognises, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he shouldn’t interrupt, but he _wants_.

‘Why did you _stop_ ,’ he whines, grabbing for the first bit of Viktor he can reach. It turns out to be his lower thigh. Chris digs his fingernails into it. 

‘Fuck!’ Viktor says, at the same time as Yuri looks down and answers, in a more normal tone, ‘Viktor’s pretty hand got tired.’

‘Please?’ Chris says. Suddenly that’s the only thing he can remember how to say in English. ‘Just…’ He swaps, looking straight at Viktor, because he knows Viktor’s weak to this kind of thing, ‘Viktor, s’il-te-plait, encore? J’ai besoin…’

‘Chris,’ Viktor says, sounding wrecked. He cups Chris’ face in his hands, kisses him over and over again. Chris might suffocate from it, or maybe he could stay like this forever. After a few moments, though, he realises the grooves between Viktor’s fingers and his cheek are collecting tears, and it’s not Viktor’s fault. 

‘Hey,’ Yuri says, ‘Hey Chris, sit up a minute.’ He and Viktor manhandle Chris into a sitting position, slumped against Yuri’s side. Yuri kisses him on the cheek, and right in the corner of his eye, and takes his hand again. ‘Chris, are you okay?’

‘ _Yes_ ,’ Chris insists. ‘I’m fine, I want more, please don’t stop.’

‘We’re taking a break,’ Yuri says, sliding his free arm around Chris’ shoulders. ‘Just for a minute.’

Chris shudders and hides his face in Yuri’s shoulder.

‘You don’t seem okay,’ Viktor says, stroking the curve of Chris neck.

‘I don’t…’ Chris hiccoughs, and balls his hands into fists. Or he would, except one of them’s holding Yuri’s hand, so he just squeezes the blood out of that instead. ‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘This is nowhere _near_ my limit.’ He’s coming apart and it’s not fair, he wants _more_.

‘Hey,’ Viktor says, palm sliding down Chris’ side, gentle. ‘No one said it had to be.’

‘But I,’ Chris says. ‘But I can _usually_...’

‘What, do you try for a personal best at masochism every time?’ Yuri asks, nosing into his hair. He’s laughing, but it’s gentle, forgiving.

Chris bites back his immediate answer, which was going to be _it’s what I’ve got left_. He doesn’t say anything else, though, and perhaps Viktor and Yuri deduce it anyway.

‘It’s okay, Chris,’ Yuri says, ‘we’ve got you.’

‘Let us look after you,’ Viktor echoes.

Chris nods, and his answer comes out plaintive. ‘But please… don’t stop now.’

‘Of course not,’ Yuri says. ‘Give us a second, please?’ Yuri disentangles himself from Chris, and Chris isn’t really sure what to expect: the end of the lovestruck gazing he interrupted, perhaps. Yuri takes Viktor’s hands, kisses each palm in turn, and then says something too low for Chris to catch.

‘Yes,’ Viktor says. ‘Yes, I’ll do that.’ And he scrambles off the bed.

‘Where..?’ Chris reaches out after him, perfectly aware that he sounds like a needy mess. Apparently that’s what he is now. He’s just going to have to embrace it.

‘It’s okay,’ Yuri says, ‘he’ll be back.’ He fidgets with the towels on the bed for a minute, until they’re in an arrangement that meets his unspecified standards, and then lies down across them. ‘Come here?’ He holds out his arms for Chris. Chris goes, and lets himself be arranged across Yuri’s chest. His head can tuck into Yuri’s shoulder: Yuri checks that and then, hand at the nape of Chris’ neck, tugs him just enough forward to kiss properly. It starts out gentle, but Chris is needy, hungry, pushing into Yuri’s kiss. He groans, rubs up against Yuri’s body, trying to get as close as he can. By the time Viktor comes back, Chris is panting, Yuri’s breath is short, and they’re both hard. Chris is stark naked and Yuri’s still fully dressed, cock pressing against Chris’ abdomen through his sweatpants. 

And then Viktor rests an _ice cold_ hand on Chris’ still-tingling ass, and Chris yelps, twitches, and elbows Yuri in the ribs.

‘What the _fuck_?’ Chris demands, twisting far enough to see. Viktor is holding an ice bucket, and has his hand shoved in it.

‘Any strong objections to ice?’ Yuri asks. 

‘No?’ Chris says, still reeling. ‘What are you…’ 

Viktor drops what must be a fair-size ice cube right smack in the curve of Chris’ butt-crack. And then he leans down, and proceeds to push it around with his tongue. This lasts about two seconds before it slides off Chris’ side and onto the towel, which is now seeming like a very sensible precaution. He must have had his hand in the bucket in the meantime, though, because his next move is to slap Chris again, lightly. The spray of freezing cold water it leaves contrasts with the bright hot sting of the slap, and Chris is _gone_ , wriggling, babbling, begging for more. And he has Yuri underneath him the whole time, stroking his back, kissing his forehead, murmuring things that may or may not be in a language Chris understands because he doesn’t fucking care anymore.

Eventually Viktor swaps cold wet ice for his hot, wet mouth, kissing and biting all over the swell of Chris’ ass, and Chris’ skin has no idea which way is up anymore. Viktor’s mouth might be the hottest thing in the universe. Yuri’s hands might be the only thing keeping him in his skin at all.

Orgasm hits him completely by surprise: one minute he’s begging and the next he can’t _breathe_ ; he comes close to panic it hits, and then shudders and cries and comes completely apart. Comes all over the front of Yuri’s sweats, too. Viktor and Yuri keep touching him, keep murmuring words he’s not trying to parse, until Chris flinches and rolls away. Away from Viktor’s mouth, sliding off Yuri’s body and into the warm space between him and the mattress. Well, it should have been a warm space. Actually it’s a towel soaked in melted but hardly warmed water. 

Chris whines and rolls further away. Yuri sits up, muttering something, and peels the towel off the bed. He gets up to dispose of it, and Viktor sprawls along Chris’ other side. He reaches out and touches Chris shoulder, almost hesitantly.

‘Hey Viktor,’ Chris says. It comes out slurred. ‘It’s good. I mean. I’m good. _You’re_ good,’ he decides, and rolls a little closer. ‘You’re so good. So good, Viktor, when did you get good at that?’

Viktor strokes his back. ‘Oh, sometime in the last ten years.’

‘It’s Yuri, isn’t it?’ Chris asks. ‘He has magic powers.’

‘I have considered that possibility,’ Viktor concedes. ‘Yuri?’ He turns a bit, from which Chris concludes that Yuri is back. ‘Do you have magic powers?’

‘Maybe,’ Yuri says. The mattress dips as he sits down. ‘I’m not sure how else I could have ended up with two such beautiful men in my bed.’

‘Hey!’ Viktor rolls over and points at him. ‘It’s _my_ bed. _I’ve_ got two beautiful men in my bed!’

‘Still because Yuri is magic,’ Chris says. ‘It’s his fault.’

‘True.’ Viktor leans over and kisses Chris’ shoulder-blade. ‘We should thank him.’

‘Thank you, Yuri,’ Chris says. It comes out wobbly and very sincere. Yuri leans past Viktor and strokes Chris’ hair out of his face.

‘You really are far gone, aren’t you?’ Yuri says. 

‘Probably you both have magic,’ Chris concludes. ‘Viktor too. He’s very good, Yuri. So good.’

‘And he’ll never get tired of hearing it.’ Yuri leans down and kisses Viktor. Slow. It’s slow and familiar and Chris aches just at the sight of it. Not a bad ache, though. He wants them to keep doing that, possibly forever, and let him watch.

Unfortunately, they stop, and turn their attention back to Chris. Yuri wrapped around Viktor, Viktor curled up close to Chris, and both of them stroking him, his skin, his hair, his face. It’s too much, in a way that everything they’ve just done wasn’t. Chris realises he’s quivering.

‘What do you need?’ It’s Viktor asking him, brushing a kiss across Chris’ jaw. ‘Chris?’

Chris doesn’t answer. How’s he supposed to know what he needs, anyway? All he knows is what he wants, and that definitely isn’t a need.

‘What do you… normally do?’ Viktor tries. ‘After?’

‘Fucking?’ Chris shakes his head. That, or the gentle, caretaking stuff he hasn’t been able to cope with since hospital. ‘But no. I don’t want…’

‘Okay.’ Viktor kisses the side of his face, again, and then his forehead. ‘Okay, no one said we had to fuck you.’

Some part of Chris reasserts normality and answers with, ‘There’s always tomorrow, right?’ 

Viktor huffs a laugh into Chris’ neck. ‘I certainly hope so.’

‘Viktor,’ Yuri says. He’s been quiet for a few minutes, and Chris is suddenly afraid he’s going to say _no_ , no there isn’t tomorrow, no this is it, this is all Chris gets. ‘Viktor, he’s cold.’

Chris tries to protest that he’s not, but he’s obviously shivering now. Viktor gets up, which leaves Chris whining and alone, until Yuri pulls him into the crook of his arm.

‘I just want…’ Chris’s mouth starts, without his brain’s permission. 

‘What?’ Yuri kisses his temple. ‘Tell me.’

‘No,’ Chris says, buries his face in Yuri’s shoulder. ‘No, it’s too…’ Viktor reappears, with a throw-rug that he wraps around Chris. 

‘What is it, Chris?’ Yuri tucks the rug in around Chris’ chest. ‘Come on, at least ask.’

‘I want to watch,’ Chris admits, face still mashed into Yuri’s shoulder. ‘You two. Together.’ Now that he says it, it feels like something he’s wanted forever, although logically, he knows he hasn’t. Of course it had occurred to him (and practically anyone who saw the live feed from Moscow that first year), but that was an idle curiosity. Now, he wants. Wants with a huge, insurmountable hunger.

‘Oh,’ Yuri says. ‘Oh.’ There’s a moment where Chris knows Viktor and Yuri are conferring, and then Viktor’s hand nudges Chris’ face out from the crook of Yuri’s shoulder.

‘I think you’ll have to actually look at us, then,’ Viktor says. He looks, impossibly, amused, and he smirks when Chris’ eyes meet his. ‘You want to watch us do what, exactly?’

‘Anything,’ Chris says, promptly. This is true: he would wrap himself in the rug and watch them wash the dishes, if there were any left to wash. ‘Whatever you want. What do _you_ do, after…’

‘Oh,’ Viktor says, and kisses him. Chris closes his eyes and gives up to it, until Viktor pulls away and turns to Yuri. Viktor half-covers Yuri’s body with his own, leaving just enough space for Chris to stay with his head on Yuri’s arm, for now. He holds Yuri’s face in his hands and kisses him, long and deep and practically _forever_.

‘Love?’ Viktor asks, and Yuri shudders. ‘You did so well. Looking after me, and Chris.’ Yuri goes, if possible, more pliant, basking in the praise. ‘Right, Chris?’ Viktor asks, and Chris startles, unprepared to be addressed. ‘He did a good job, right?’

‘Very,’ Chris says, mouth dry.

‘What do you want now, love?’ Viktor asks Yuri, stroking down his neck and kissing along his jaw. ‘What can I give you? Chris wants to see.’

Yuri’s eyes are half-closed. ‘I just… I can’t think any more,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to think anymore.’

‘Okay.’ Viktor kisses him, and Yuri arches up into him. ‘Clothes off, first.’

Viktor peels Yuri out of his clothes - which means dislodging Chris, but that’s okay. They sit up for a minute, kissing like they’ll never get tired of it. Yuri clutches at Viktor and Chris watches in wonder. This seems more like the Yuri he’s known, off the ice, for years: shaking, clinging to Viktor like he’s a rock and Yuri might be swept away at any moment.

It’s not as if Chris hasn’t met switches before. He’s just never seen it up close and personal, not with the same couple in the same scene. It’s not like a switch at all: switch is completely the wrong word, implies a sharp transition. It’s more like the tide in an estuary: when the ocean stops pushing upriver, the current surges down to meet it, fills the gaps, chases it out to sea.

‘Chris?’ Viktor interrupts Chris’ reflections on sexual dynamics. ‘Chris, can you hold him for me?’

Viktor settles his husband back against Chris chest, waits to check that Chris has wrapped his arms around Yuri and kissed the crook of his neck, and then slides further down himself. He’s half-hanging off the end of the bed, Chris can see that much, but Viktor doesn’t seem to care: just takes Yuri into his mouth and delivers what is a relatively short-lived but, by all signs, otherwise spectacular blowjob. Yuri covers his face and gasps quietly through it, shaking apart in Chris’ arms, and it’s so beautiful Chris hurts from it.

* * *

Yuri and Viktor have left by the time Chris gets up the next morning. Makkachin, evidently bored of being alone, comes into Chris’ room and sits on the bed. Chris, fortunately, wakes up fast enough to prevent the very large poodle from sitting right on his bad knee. Never averse to currying favour with other people’s pets, Chris gets up and goes hunting for dog treats.

He finds one of the red bean pancakes on the kitchen countertop, with ‘EAT ME’ scrawled in Viktor’s spiky all-caps hand. Chris finds the treat for Makkachin, and makes himself coffee before eating the pancake. He tries to figure out if Viktor cooks anything that’s not a pancake-based foodstuff. There’s the blintzs; the dorayaki; there was something with grated vegetables that seemed to the Japanese answer to fritters. He and Yuri had cooked up a combination of Indian dishes a few weeks ago - Chris hadn’t been there to watch, but now he’s starting to suspect Viktor’s chief contribution might have been the dosa. He’s fairly sure he’s seen Viktor make sandwiches, at some point. Probably.

Well, at least the dorayaki are good. Stick to what you’re good at, Viktor, Chris thinks. That would be pancakes, choreography, and spanking. Not a bad profile, all up.

Chris takes Makkachin down to the beach. And he gets out his phone and follows up on the not-quite-instruction Yuri had given, when Chris went back to his own room last night. 

8.02: I hope non-asshole protocols include sleeping with them.  
Théo, 8.04: Hi, Chris, did you know it’s midnight at home?  
Théo, 8.06: Also I like the implication that you sleeping with someone might be an asshole move.  
8.07: Well. You have met me.  
Théo, 8.08: So’s Nikiforov. Some people never learn. ;)

The winky face is about the saving grace on that.

8.10: Sorry if I woke you.  
Théo, 8.11: You know I hate sleep anyway.  
Théo, 8.12: Chris, are you asking for my permission? Because you’ve never done that _before_ , why would you now?  
8.13: Not permission. Too late for that.

The strange thing is, he’s never been in a position where he has to figure out _how to tell Théo_ , before. They’ve never had a permission-granting arrangement: that might work for some people, but Chris flits from place to place and timezone to timezone. Théo goes skiing and goes to house parties all over Europe. Chris has, however, always taken it for granted that he tells Théo who he’s been sleeping with and when, because Théo gossips like… well, like Chris’ Nonna. Only if Nonna knows about BDSM parties, Chris doesn’t want to know. 

8.15: I thought you should know.  
Théo, 8.16: Duly noted. 

Chris stares at that for a few minutes, while Makkachin chases seagulls. With a silent prayer to the as-yet-unspecified patron saint of communicating like a fucking adult, he presses the call button.

‘What’s up?’ Théo picks up almost immediately.

‘I can’t tell if you’re angry with me or not.’

A sigh. ‘Yes, I’m angry with you.’

Oh. Well. That, Chris thinks, may pose some problems. He imagines, for a moment, telling Yuri and Viktor their plans for the rest of his stay are cancelled because, of all the potential parties to freak out about this, _Théo_ doesn’t like it. 

Of course, that may not be the source of the problem. ‘Because I didn’t tell you before?’ Chris asks, hoping that’s the root of it. Maybe Théo thinks he’s been sleeping with Viktor and Yuri a lot longer than one day. He’ll just have to explain, and then...

‘No,’ Théo says, and Chris kind of wants to cry. There’s a silence, and then Théo takes pity on him. ‘I’m not angry you’re sleeping with them.’

‘Oh. Oh. That’s good.’

‘It doesn’t _help_ , though.’ Théo says. ‘I’m… I’m pissed, Chris, because you can go off to Japan and let your friends help you, and you can’t let me.’

‘Oh.’ Chris bites his lip. ‘Oh, I see. I’m…’ he goes to say he’s sorry, but he’s not. Not sorry he came here, or sorry for trusting Yuri and Viktor. He thinks, for about half a second, of protesting that Viktor is basically his oldest friend. But that’s not it, and if your boyfriend of five years doesn’t rank alongside your oldest friend, even Chris can see you have problems. ‘I should’ve thought of that before,’ he says. 

Théo’s silent, still.

‘I can’t - I won’t just stop trusting them, not now.’ 

‘I’m not asking you to,’ Théo says. ‘Just. Don’t ask me to stop feeling hurt by it.’

‘Okay,’ Chris says. ‘Should I not have told you?’

‘About what? The sex? I don’t see why you did, no.’

Chris closes his eyes, thinks about that for a second. ‘Because I don’t feel right not telling you.’

‘It’s not as if I’ve been keeping you updated for the past - however many weeks it’s been.’

‘It’s not that,’ Chris says, although now that he thinks about it, he’s missed that, too. ‘It’s not guilt. I just…’ the truth feels like he has to peel it out of his insides. ‘Call it an intimacy thing. It’s important to me. Sex is one thing, and checking in with you is… something else.’

‘Now you get it,’ Théo says, and he sounds… bitter, but not really angry.

Chris sighs. ‘I could’ve been checking in with you regardless, couldn’t I?’

‘Yeah.’ Théo hums for a second. ‘But you owed me an apology, and apparently you needed both Annalies _and_ your friends in Japan to kick your ass into giving it. What’s done is done.’

‘Okay,’ Chris says. And then, for good measure, ‘I’m sorry. About how long it took.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ Théo says.

* * *

Chris meets Yuri and Viktor at the inn at lunch-time. Yuri’s quiet: quieter than usual, even, and Viktor seems to be touching him about half as often. They don’t seem to be fighting, though, so Chris helps Mrs Katsuki with lunch and lets them recover from training. Yuri goes out on his own to the ballet studio, and Viktor and Chris get presented with a very large stack of freshly-washed towels that need to be arranged into artful folds, and lined up for Mari to collect and distribute to various rooms.

Viktor is surprisingly good at towel folding. Chris is terrible.

‘Viktor?’ Chris asks, when he’s almost got the hang of it. ‘Is Yuri okay?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Viktor says. ‘Just…’ he waves his hand. ‘He needs time to himself. It happens sometimes.’

‘It’s…’ Chris grits his teeth. ‘Is it because of me? Because we don’t have to…’

Viktor looks at him for a minute. ‘It’s not your _fault_ ,’ he says, first. ‘And I think he’d be disappointed if we _didn’t_... well.’ Apparently, Viktor is not completely willing to say ‘fuck’ in his in-law’s house. Fair enough.

‘But it is because of me?’ Chris frowns. ‘Can I… why?’

‘He used to… need time like this, when we first started, you know,’ Viktor says. ‘And sometimes if things have been particularly intense. Mostly if he’s been, well, in charge.’

‘ _Oh_ ,’ Chris says. Top drop. Right. ‘That makes sense. Okay.’ He looks over at Viktor. ‘You don’t get that? The day after?’

‘Me? No.’ Viktor frowns. ‘If I’m going to be weird, it’s right away. And I get… clingy, basically the opposite of Yuri.’

‘Somehow,’ Chris says. ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’

Viktor laughs, and flicks him with a towel. 

‘You know what _does_ surprise me?’ Chris waits for Viktor to shake his head. ‘Yuri. What was that about him sleeping with married people? Why did I not know about this?’

Viktor looks confused, for a second, and then laughs. ‘Oh, _that_. It was ages ago.’

‘Ages ago as in before you, or after?’

‘After,’ Viktor admits. ‘A few years ago. I was in Russia, he went out drinking with friends…’

‘ _Who_?’

‘Yuko and Takeshi,’ Viktor says. ‘His rinkmates from when he was a kid? They run the rink now.’

‘With the triplets?’ Chris decides not to ask where the triplets were during all this. Not awake, presumably, or video evidence would have emerged. ‘Wait, isn’t Yuko the one who used to have a crush on _you_ when they were kids?’

‘Her and Yuri both, yes,’ Viktor says. ‘I try not to think about that. Unless I need a reason to make merciless fun of Yuri, of course.’

‘Naturally.’ Chris thinks about this for a few moments. ‘And you were _okay_ with that?’ He knows it’s possible. It’s abundantly clear that rumours of Viktor Nikiforov’s monogamy have been greatly overstated. But he just can’t square it in his head.

‘Oh, hell, no,’ Viktor admits. ‘I was a wreck.’

‘You didn’t… you didn’t call me?’ Chris looks at him in surprise. ‘I mean, I know you don’t call me every time you two have a fight -’

‘Anymore,’ Viktor interrupts, and they both spare a moment to laugh at Viktor’s past self. ‘No, Chris, I didn’t call you, because… well, I wanted to rage and break things, and I figured you’d give me good advice. Probably something about love being infinite and all that.’

‘You thought I’d give you the poly evangelist talk?’ Chris is taken aback. ‘When have I _ever_?’

‘You haven’t,’ Viktor says. ‘But I’d done research, and I thought…’

‘Wait. You’d done research _a few years ago_? I thought you meant in the past, I dunno, two weeks.’

‘Oh.’ Viktor flushes. ‘No, that was. That wasn’t anything to do with Yuri, not to start with.’

‘Who, then?’

Viktor looks down at the towel he’s artfully arranged into a lump. ‘You, actually.’

‘Me. But I wasn’t even… I was just casually sleeping around, back then.’

‘No, not then,’ Viktor says. ‘When you met… it wasn’t Théo, it was, what was her name? Yulia? I wanted to… understand. Not for _me_ , I didn’t have designs on you or anything,’ he says, urgently, as if it’s very important that Chris, who went to bed with him and Yuri last night, believe Viktor wasn’t planning on hitting on him six or seven years ago. ‘I wanted to understand. To know you were okay, I guess.’

That is, somehow, both incredibly ridiculous and painfully sweet. Chris picks up Viktor’s near hand and kisses his knuckles. ‘And am I okay?’

Viktor shrugs. ‘You will be.’

**Author's Note:**

> Caveats lectors: I feel like I should put a LARGE WARNING on this, but I don't really know why. Some of the kink is messed-up, but actually people are dealing with it in a reasonably healthy way, given the circumstances. Chris is being an asshole, including about mental health, which isn't fun.
> 
> I think the thing is that I was bleeding anxiety all over this fic, so it feels super volatile to me. Your mileage may vary. If concerned, read the previous fic first: there were some people who found that hard going: this is worse, but in much the same ways.
> 
> If you want your angst more evenly balanced with fluff, check out [neomeruru's work instead](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9383654/chapters/21243230)
> 
> Ed: Okay, guys. If you think I could've tagged for something I'm 95% likely to agree. I am pro mass tagging, but sometimes just miss shit. Or it's not really occurred to me that Thing X might be a common squick (goodness knows I have plenty of squicks myself, but most of them are so uncommon as to never be tagged for). It would be NICE if you didn't come in here and swear at me and issue imperative orders. Content tags are a courtesy; it would be nice if you were courteous in asking for them.
> 
> While we're at it, if the characterisation doesn't work for you you can either go away and read something else, or ask me *why* I made certain characterisation choices. Writing me essays on how I Got [Character] Wrong is not playing nice. And maybe try not using loaded, purity-policing language like 'nymphomaniac', 'selfish gratification', etc while you're commenting on fictional people's sexual behaviours, because, surprise surprise, that is not pleasant for RL people reading! I shouldn't have to put a disclaimer saying This Fic Reflects Some Things That Are Very Personal To Me, but here: This Fic Reflects Some Things That Are Very Personal To Me. Be nice.


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